


In a Dark Time I and II (1/4)

by thebasement_archivist



Category: The X-Files
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1998-07-31
Updated: 1998-07-31
Packaged: 2018-11-20 04:48:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 33,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11328927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebasement_archivist/pseuds/thebasement_archivist
Summary: Based on the episode *Sleepless*.





	In a Dark Time I and II (1/4)

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Basement](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Basement), which moved to the AO3 to ensure the stories are always available and so that authors may have complete control of their own works. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Basement's collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thebasement/profile).

 

In a Dark Time: Sleepless by A. Leigh-Anne Childe

In a Dark Time: Sleepless  
by A. Leigh-Anne Childe

Category: Slash [Mulder/Krycek]. Much UST for now, with oodles of NC-17 material to come as soon as the plot allows.  
Disclaimer: I hope Chris Carter doesn't mind sharing his toys. I promise not to break them. . .well, maybe their hearts.  
Author's note: This contains, along with my own original work, all of the "Sleepless" dialogue, transcribed verbatim and complete save for a very few scenes. I've altered no line whatsover--despite being on occasion sorely tempted. No plagiarism or copyright infringement is intended. Basically, this represents an attempt to expand on "pre-existing" events and conversations in a logical, continuity-consistent manner. . .*ha-ha-ha*! I did a good bit of research to get the background details correct (restaurants in Quantico, FBI slang, 1994 soundbites, etc), but on certain points (e.g., the layout of Midtown South precinct) I took ruthless artistic liberties. (Ever try to reach a NYPD police operator? Life's too short). Anyway, if anyone finds a howler, either in character or background, I'd welcome hearing about it. There is a Cafe Aurora in Alexandria, though I've never been there. A photo of Alex's apartment complex can be seen via an Alexandria, VA search at http://www.aptsforrent.com/cgibin/frm/search . . .Speaking of Alex, some background has been provided for him, but who can say whether he's being entirely truthful on the subject? I can't vouch for the accuracy of his Russian either.  
Please send feedback to: <> No flames, please!

* * *

In a Dark Time: Sleepless  
(part 1 of 4)  
by A. Leigh-Anne Childe

Alexandria, Virginia

It was raining again, the sky making sounds of determination and thunder across the rooftops of the city. It was a great, quiet, dependable noise. The mass of each raindrop was great, their mass arrival a steady thunk of fat, damp landings.

A plague of frogs? wondered the man as he drew gradually from sleep, finding himself in place where he'd left himself, sprawled limpet-soft on his couch, his body bathed in bluish flickering light. Waking, he focused first, by instinct and old habit, on the source of images, watching with his eyes before his mind even caught up. A graveyard, a staggering figure, two young people standing at a tombstone. Movement, violence, the muscular spasms of mouths opening in silent words and cries. The action on the screen seemed choreographed to the dull roar of the rain, as if human emotion and behavior had been deliberately contrasted to the impersonal murmur of the world's weather. The human scale: small and boxed, mute, violent, awkwardly simulating itself. A simulacrum running on its endless loop while the sky poured down from above.

A small shudder of shock rolled through the man's flesh, and his heartbeat accelerated. Fox Mulder came awake. The varying pressure of his body nudged the remote, which was half buried under one hip, and the screen jerked to show a man earnestly displaying a plastic kitchen implement.

Mulder sat up, staring around him. Accustomed to half-sleep, the nocturnal irregular rhythms of his own restless mind, he didn't usually find the strange twilight quiet of his apartment unsettling, but once in a while, like now, he awoke in the small hours and wonderingly contemplated his surroundings. It was first a mental reflex. Had there been a noise? No. Was there any odd cool draft of air that there shouldn't be? No. Was his gun under the edge of the couch where he'd left it? It was. Were the files on the coffee table where he'd left them? They were. Was there something in here with him? He paused, face expressionless, his entire body listening. No. . .probably not. . .definitely not. This time there was no thrill along the nape of his neck, no prescient frisson of intuition and warning to make him reach for the gun, as he sometimes did, and prowl carefully around his lair, searching for signs of unwelcome visitors.

After running through his wake-up routine, he drifted a bit, gaze spooling absently across the littered surface of the coffee table, where case files, congealed pizza, a half-empty beer bottle, and a damp TV Guide reflected a stark but grayish strobic light, their irregular cover blanketing a lower strata of older and dustier debris--skin mags, mostly, of various core and genre, covered with little yellow sticky notes ("pg 21, ck NCMEC--Rhonda", "pg 39/age?", "Thai--call USCS, ugh", "tp, beer, laundry detg, sf seeds, oj"). A slippery stack of comics. Vamperotica. Squee. Sisters of Mercy. The latest Fortean Times, bookmarked with a section of last Sunday's Times, folded open to the crossword, fully filled in with anal-retentive ink, annotated with a cryptic "18 m" along the margin. A Patricia Cornwell novel. The Complete Works of Gaius Petronius. An egg of Silly Putty. A water pistol realistically modeled after a police handgun. Several empty burrito wrappers. The Washington Blade, opened to the personals, dotted with red balloons and doodles of flowers. A necktie dotted with goldfish and tomato stains, still loosely noosed.

Is this me? Mulder thought. He reached up and scratched his rough jaw, swallowed experimentally, considered the beer, looked away to stare out the window. Light from the street illuminated pale streamers like melting diamonds on the glass. Inside, geometric shadows lay blurred and folded across desktop and walls. He could see the page edges of books, the light areas of a poster, the gnarled accusing fist of a dead potted plant. A sudden, blinding force of light nearly stopped his heart, and then he got a grip on himself, forced his muscles to unclench, thought wryly: sucker. Just a little lightning. This time.

Mulder stood and began to wander over to his desk, then caught himself, and instead sidled up to it on an oblique angle, as if attempting to casually approach the target of a crush. I'm afraid to even stand next to my own window. Let alone look out. What kind of life is this? He ended up in a crouch next to the window, keeping his head slightly below sill level and off to one side, looking out and up. Hey, but who's to say the attack won't come from above, right, Spooky? He was looking at the sky through a curtain of glistening rain and through the sticky-tape remnants of an "X". He felt hunted, but alert and very alive. He cupped a hand around one bicep and felt the lightly pelted skin warm under his palm. It gave him an odd feeling for a moment, as if the hand, or perhaps the arm, weren't his own. But if not his, whose?

Alex.

The name entered his skull like an insolent ghost, pulling along memories in its wake like cold chains. Mulder closed his eyes with tired, old despair. Bastard. You fucking bastard. . .God, I need to jack off.

The thought brought with it a kind of absent-minded irritation. He might have been reminding himself to give his car an oil change for all the enthusiasm the idea roused. Too much of a good thing--or at least the real thing--had soured him on solitaire. He had a momentary, blinding remembrance of the first time with Alex, the other man playing him like an angel strokes a harp, all long fingers and limber body, working him over in a way so wickedly sweet that every doubt and fear in his gray, shadowed life had been briefly swept up and away on a wave's crest of pure, passionate joy. . .

Self-delusion was a marvelous mechanism. He could replay it as many times as he liked, he was still a fool. And yet. . .how badly he'd needed to believe. . .

FBI Headquarters, Washington D.C.

Thursday, 11:17 a.m.

"You comin' over or what? You said you was comin' over two hours ago. And I'm waitin' here like some stupid bimbo--"

Mulder stared at the rolling wheels of the tape machine. Wait a minute, was this important? Where was Demaris calling from anyway? Mmm--car phone. But he'd lost track, couldn't tell what he was listening to. Waiting. He rewound. Lucille's grating voice rolled forward again. ". . .waitin' here like some stupid bimbo who ain't got nothin' better to do with her time than sit around waitin' for someone like you. . ." Rolling, rolling. . .hmm. We're on a roll here. Probably not important. As the world turns. The tape whirred and Lucille bitched. Mulder's eyes dropped shut and then he jerked slightly, blinking them open again.

Jesus, he was tired. Twenty-four hours of wiretap tape to "transcribe". Somewhere in the tangled skein of his mind a snarl was born. Thanks a lot, Skinner. Thanks for the demotion to the secretarial pool. So, okay, the A.D. hadn't meant it quite like that; slip of the tongue or deliberate jab notwithstanding, they weren't actually making him type, thank God. No matter how low he sunk on the bureau totem pole, he would never be farmed out to support staff. In truth he'd been requested to lend his "professional expertise" to a "top priority" case, to check the salient points of tape against transcript, listening for nuances of tone that might escape the flat translation of voice to page, and ("as long as you're listening anyway, Agent Mulder") for any suggestive background noises. So why did it feel like make-work? Well, for one, because his specialty was not psycholinguistics and the bureau didn't need him to lend his "professional expertise" to analysis of this banal natter when they had a dozen specialists in the regular department to handle it.

The X-Files were closed, but instead of officially reassigning Mulder to another section within the criminal investigation division, the brass had set him up on so-called "temporary" duty with white-collar crimes, a duty that given the nature of such assignments could last anywhere from three months to three years. If the tasks he was working had made good use of his abilities he wouldn't have minded so much. But they didn't--that was not the point of them. They were punishment in the guise of duty, and the charade made him resentful. Skinner's response to his most recent case proposal ("I'll look into this Agent Mulder, and let you know") had carried the flavor of a brush-off; his promise to "look into it" very likely no more than a sop to get Mulder out of the office.

Mulder had--more or less for lack of anything better to do--let himself work to that point of tiredness at which the brain begins to shut down in response to its own schedule, and sensory phenomena begin to slide in and out of focus. Though it was only about 11 a.m., Mulder was in his own twilight state, and time had stretched out so that it felt more like the day's end. Around him, white-collar's general office seemed like a large fishbowl swimming with brightly colored fish, darting here, flashing by there, sending ripples of vital energy through the medium. It was beginning to make Mulder faintly nauseous, even feverish.

He picked up a cup of coffee, discovering simultaneously that it was two hours old and that he didn't want it anyway. There was a small bark of anger from the voice in his ear, and Mulder realized it was the culmination of a bit of dialogue he hadn't been following. He'd stopped listening and lost his place again.

"Shit," he swore under his breath. He hit the rewind button, then play, only to find he'd rewound too far. For what seemed like the tenth time he heard Lucille's voice whining "--like some stupid bimbo. . ." He closed his eyes a moment, then opened them and forced himself to listen through again, staring at the machine in a kind of stupor of concentration.

Alex Krycek entered the office and looked around, assessing the territory. It was the usual bureau office bustle of white shirts and modest skirts. More bustle than might be expected, though. A big case was obviously winding up, the kind that had probably been running for years, and a frisson of reserved jubilation was evident in the demeanor of the department's agents. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a dart fly to impact a target board on which a surveillance photo of a laughing man had been stapled. He smiled, then looked across the room, spotting Mulder immediately, though he was half-huddled behind a bulky tape player.

Alex's first impression was of a tired man concentrating, wearing an absent, almost trance-like expression on his face. It seemed an ordinary face on first glance--but then they'd warned him not to take Mulder at face value. It was the first time he'd actually seen the man in person, and Alex briefly and instinctively tried to reconcile the agent's innocuous appearance with his reputation, and with the reports. Obsessive. Paranoid. Abrasive. Rude. A loner, not a team player. A delusional crackpot. A joke. A danger.

Alex hesitated, wondering if he would get off on the best foot with Mulder by interrupting him now. He'd probably welcome it--after all, he'd wanted the case. But still he hung back a moment, feeling unaccountably uncertain. Mulder's reputation wasn't the shiniest, but he was still acknowledged to be brilliant and possessed of uncommonly sharp insight into people's thoughts. Ingratiate yourself with him, Alex. . .if you think you're up to the challenge, the chairman had said, with his characteristic smirk. His trust will be hard to gain. He's a paranoid man. It might be best to think of him as your interrogator--remember that he'll never have evidence on you--the only thing that can hang you is your own confession. Admit nothing. . .

Alex ducked his head, distractedly scanned the room, and in an unconscious gesture, flicked his tongue across his lips, quickly and nervously. By now a few people were casually glancing his way.

"Agent Mulder."

Startled from his concentration, Mulder looked up, lowering his headphones from his ears.

Alex stepped forward, handing him the case file. "It's your 302. Assistant Director Skinner just approved it."

Mulder took the paperwork and looked it over rather blankly.

"There's been a mistake here. There's been another agent assigned to the case."

"Ah, that would be me. . .Krycek. Alex Krycek." Krycek inwardly winced, catching himself in the nervous tic he sometimes had of nodding when referring to himself. He suspected he looked like one of those dolls with a bobbing head on a spring. Trying to project assurance, he stuck out his hand, smiling.

Bond. James Bond, thought Mulder. His eyes narrowed and he ignored the man's outstretched hand. "Skinner didn't say anything about taking on a partner."

Alex dropped his hand. Ingratiate yourself. Yeah, right. "It wasn't Skinner. Actually, I opened the file two hours before your request, so, technically, it's my case."

"And you already talked to the police?" Mulder tried to keep his irritability in check. Who the hell was this?

"Yep--just hung up on the officer in charge a few minutes ago--detective named--" He pulled his pad from his pocket. " Horton. Turns out Grissom called 911 to report a fire."

"I heard the tape."

Alex ignored the snappish tone. "Did you hear that Forensics got a spent fire extinguisher off the floor. Grissom's prints were all over it."

The question hadn't really been a question. Smug, aren't you, thought Mulder. He studied Krycek, eyebrow raised, as the younger agent leaned in over Mulder's desk and gently slid aside his legal pad to reveal a handful of photos. Krycek gave him a knowing look and a slight smirk. It was a rather impudent gesture, but Mulder knew he was busted. He'd told Skinner the NYPD wouldn't even talk to him--which at the time had been true--but since then he'd managed to contact Horton and convince him to scan and send photos of the scene. Not exactly proper procedure.

Krycek shuffled through the photos, as Mulder restrained himself from batting Krycek's hand away and waited, expecting some comment on the inappropriateness of his having had evidentiary materials before a case was officially opened--and not only that, but having them on hand while he was supposed to be focused and working on something else. But Krycek merely said, "The walls and floor in his living room were covered with ammonium phosphate--"

"But no trace of fire."

"Not even a burnt match."

Despite himself, Mulder asked in a deceptively offhand voice, "Is that all you know?"

"Mmm, yeah, so far." A sly but not uncharming grin slid onto Krycek's face and his eyes caught a conspiratorial light. "What do you think it means?"

Mulder began clearing papers off his desk, determined to cut the conversation short. "Listen, I appreciate the show and tell and I don't want you to take this personally. . ." In his peripheral vision he saw the smile die on Krycek's face. ". . .but I work alone. I'll straighten things out with Skinner."

As soon as the words came out of his mouth Mulder was already half regretting them, and his tone--it was the kind of off-the-cuff, chip-on-the-shoulder arrogance that had helped earn him a bureau rep he wasn't exactly proud of. But a mind to manners didn't chasten his anger much. It probably wasn't this Krycek person's fault he'd been assigned the watchdog slot. On the other hand, it very likely was his fault he was a gangly, droopy-suited, yuppie-power-tie-wearing twerp with a kiss-ass puss and Bu-hair, so that evened the odds Mulder wasn't going to like him. Swallowing the impulse to apology, he brushed past Krycek, pulling on his jacket.

Alex turned, trying to keep his seething inwardly directed. "It's my case, Agent Mulder."

Mulder heard the displeasure in the younger agent's voice; his tone had grown hard. He paused in leaving, turning instead as he finished pulling on jacket to regard Krycek silently.

"Look. . ." Krycek stepped forward, lowering his voice slightly to minimize the public effect of their confrontation. "I may be. . .green, but I had the case first and I'm not going to give it away so quickly."

Mulder gauged his chances of making a run for it. He wondered if Krycek was a sprinter or a distance man. Long legs. Mmm. Scratch that idea. Which left deception. It wasn't his usual metier, but it was probably for the best--for Krycek's sake if nothing else. Given the mood Mulder was in, if he got into a car right now with this puppy he'd pull a man-bites-dog before the trip was out. Christ but he was feeling edgy. Not enough sleep, probably.

"All right," he said aloud. "I'll tell you what--I've got some work to finish up around here--why don't you go down to the motor pool and requisition us a car and then I'll meet you down there."

"That's all. . .I mean, you don't--you don't have a problem with us working together?" Alex, geared up for a fight, showed his surprise more than he'd meant to, and knew it by the faint, dry smile that appeared on Mulder's face. Mulder had been painted to him as non compos mentis, not just a basket case but a walking clothes hamper of neuroses and antisocial impulses. In the category of those still carrying badges, he was said to be the most unbalanced bastard the bureau had ever produced--and it had produced more than its share of locos, a fact which Krycek had learned already from first-hand experience.

And here was Mulder handing the file over, saying mildly, "Hey, it's your party."

It was actually quite gracious of a senior agent to make such a concession, and Alex realized that it would look odd if he didn't make some gesture in return. "Well, um. . .I'll get the car." He ducked his head, shying a bit under the older man's coolly assessing gaze. Besides, he wasn't above showing off his long lashes. His repertoire of charms had its uses, and even the straightest of men were capable of responding on some level, whether they realized it or not.

And Mulder did smile, though Krycek didn't notice how quickly it dissolved once his back was turned. Nor did he see the speculative look Mulder gave him as he left.

Mulder watched Krycek lope off, and wondered how long it would take before it hit him that there'd been no mention of where they were going with the car. A small smile, hung slightly askew, reappeared on his lips. If all went well, he'd be long gone before that event. He opened one of the file folders in his hand and tried to look studious as he ambled from the office, hoping to avoid catching the attention of Agent Ted Maxwell, a veteran member of the Mormon Mafia, whose desk was by the door. Maxwell had an annoying tendency to "josh" Mulder loudly, requesting advance warning for the invasion.

It wasn't Mulder's luckiest day.

"Whoa, Mulder, sliding off so soon? Guess we're a bit of a comedown from patrolling the lofty heights of the final frontier, huh? Any update on ID-Day? You'd tell me, right? You know I want some warning, don't want to wake up one ayy-em and find those Martians pulling up in moving vans, taking over the neighborhood. Don't want to be sharing my condo with nothin' green."

"Thursday."

"Huh?" Maxwell's beef-slab face hung slack in a show of bemusement, but his beady eyes gleamed with derision.

Mulder leaned across Maxwell's desk, violating his personal space just enough to make the man lean back uncomfortably. "Thursday. Eleven-thirty a.m. Don't tell anyone or it's my ass, Maxwell." Mulder's voice was bland, his face expressionless.

"Sheesh, Mulder. You know I'm joshin' ya. What a card--hey--you don't think they'll be giving these guys green cards, do you? Martians--green--green cards. Heh heh. . ."

"Turkey," Mulder muttered, leaving.

The third basement level was quiet. From its deserted appearance it seemed very likely that no one had been down here since last Monday, when Mulder had switched off the lights and left to take up what he assured himself would be temporary residence in a back corner cubicle on the fourth floor. There was a deep silence down here, though the halls didn't echo, lined as they were with filing cabinets--and files--dating back to a time when the cold war was in its icy infancy, a conception no bigger than a snowflake. Sound here was baffled and absorbed by uncounted linear drawer feet of hard copy, slowly petrifying into a great forest of forgotten data.

Mulder flicked on the overhead lights on the plate by the elevator, and threaded his way through the labyrinth with a familiarity few others in the bureau could claim these days, winding his way quickly around cabinets and shelves, office furniture stored haphazardly in the middle of the hallways, stacks of dusty file boxes, rolled wall maps.

Overhead, the fluorescent lights cast only a dim glow along the ceiling, limited gleams like chalk strokes defining a sea of shadow. In some places the tubes were flickering with a disturbing strobic pulse resembling the atmospheric effect of a storm. Other tubes had gone altogether dark and had been that way for as long as Mulder could remember. A tattered white moth patrolled the length of the ceiling, pacing Mulder, dipping erratically in and out of his line of sight, then moving in and knocking frantically at his shoulder.

"Sorry. Not the Armani." He blew it gently from his lapel, and entered his old office. He didn't bother to turn on the overheads, merely the desk lamp. He had been afraid of what he would find, but with illumination came reassurance. The place looked untouched, and though that was probably wishful thinking, it was at the very least still unscavenged. No one had yet thought to snag his computer for their own office, or project, or sting operation. A good thing. This work-station was considerably more privileged than it had any right to be. Also he hadn't transferred his gif collection yet.

"Hey, baby," he murmured to the computer. "Miss me?" He booted up, tossed his files onto the crowded desk, dropped into his chair--his chair! Damn. It took time for a man to break in a chair. How perfect this one was. How quickly he'd forgotten. Maybe he should think about bringing it upstairs. . .no, what was he thinking. This was only temporary.

While logging on, Mulder tucked the phone handset against his ear and called for plane reservations and then for a cab to meet him in front of the Hoover building. Too bad he couldn't take his car, but he didn't want to chance running into Krycek. He tried to reach Scully but she was teaching a practicum. He got one of her lab assistants instead, a man whose voice he didn't recognize; after a moment's hesitation, he said he'd call again later rather than interrupt her.

"Can I take a message, Mr--?"

"No. Thanks. I'll call back." Mulder dropped the phone into its cradle and glanced at his watch. He had about half an hour before the cab arrived. Just about enough time. "Okay, Mr Krycek, where are you, who are you. . ." He entered the personnel program, and clicked for records. A restricted access screen popped up, bearing a glaring red box, in which Mulder entered a certain password that he had no business knowing. All agents were required by regulations to change their password monthly, but the usual idiosyncrasies still applied. In choosing his, Skinner rotated reliably through the names of the squadron members he'd served with in Vietnam. Once he set his mind to it, it had taken Mulder very little time to deduce this, and the combination of Skinner's password and the system operator's (and how he'd gotten that was a story in itself--tech services needed a serious raise in security consciousness) allowed him unrestricted access to data up to and on the A.D. level, as well as the ability to edit out his sessions.

In less than a minute Mulder was looking at Krycek's file. A photo-image of the agent stared out at him. "Hello. Yon Alex has a lean and hungry look. . .bad hair day. . .smirk seems to be permanently engraved. . .that can't be right--" Mulder mentally subtracted in his head. "Born after the Beatles break-up and carrying a federal badge. . .Doogie Howser does justice. . .think I'm getting old. . .B. A. John Jay. . .hmm. NYPD? Not so green as you paint yourself."

Mulder scrolled down further. Parents deceased. No siblings. Father had been career Army, a doctor; while in the field for mother's occupation someone had entered a somewhat politically incorrect "N/A". The family had moved often over the years, in tow with dad from post to post, including a tour in Germany. Parents moved to New Jersey on father's retirement. Young Alex had left home promptly at eighteen (the parents had died two years later in an auto accident), escaping to New York City, where he'd melted into the metropolis' great stew-pot of humanity. He'd enrolled at CUNY, at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, but despite this, and despite listing a number of jobs held, in careful detail (please record all employment, leaving no gaps for periods greater than three weeks), one could read between the lines--light class load, mediocre grades--that Krycek had essentially dropped out for a while, presumably to sow some wild oats. His parents' death had brought him a small military dependent's annuity, but the elder Krycek had let his insurance lapse, so after debts were paid there wasn't much left. Soon after this, Alex had transferred to CUNY's John Jay College of Criminal Justice, based on a dramatic turn-around in academic performance and several glowing recommendations from instructors. He'd continued to put himself through school largely on earnings from waiting tables, and after graduation had served for three years in the NYPD. During that period he'd taken almost enough credits for a master's in criminology, then--after being sponsored to attend the National Academy--had decided to apply to the FBI. He'd graduated just last year, but instead of pulling the usual field-office assignment somewhere in the heartland he'd been sent to HQ and given a position in special operations--tails and taps.

"Somebody likes you, Alex. And now here you are opening your own case--odd in itself--and what did you choose?" Mulder found the whole scenario very unlikely. This was, on the surface, a nothing case--not even that much: it was no case at all, not yet anyway. A death with no truly suspicious elements, just a few odd notes of limited interest. So Grissom had reported a fire. So what. Mulder himself would never have given such circumstances a second glance if it hadn't been for the anonymous tip he'd received. Who had tipped Krycek--and why?

Mulder, abandoning his line of thought for the time being, scrolled quickly through Krycek's Academy ratings, which were uniformly high, and a few approving supervisory remarks ("Mr Krycek applies himself with great focus to whatever goal he seeks to pursue"), then with another glance at his watch exited the program and cleaned up after himself in the system. He tried Scully again but she was still teaching.

Twenty minutes. He hoped Krycek wasn't getting too restless just yet. He debated adding in some more delay time by calling down to the motor pool, but then nixed the idea. A trick was one thing--he could claim a miscommunication in plans if necessary--but a systematic program of deceit was quite another, more serious matter. Mulder's only goal at present was to make good his escape and start working the case; he hadn't thought out any long-term plan. He just knew that evading the bureau's spies was good policy. He'd seen one informant killed already. It was one death among many he'd been witness to, but it was a death laid at his feet, and it had changed his life forever. It had opened his eyes to the nature of menace he was up against. A Kafkaesque, totalitarian machinations of faceless, nameless men--this was the enemy he'd engaged. And yet. . .he was part of that machine. He too worked in the castle, answering to the very government whose policies he undermined, whose actions he opposed.

For a second, or several, Mulder lost his volition, staring off across his office into space, thinking of nothing in particular, just feeling a wave of tiredness wash over him that brought with it a brief but nearly overwhelming sense of pointlessness. It wasn't pointless, of course, this course he'd set himself on. Frightening, infuriating, distressing, sometimes even humiliating. . .but not pointless. Because if it had been, he could have given it up--and he could not give it up. This was the mast to which he'd bound his life. And even when he felt in danger of losing his soul he could not bring himself to yield. Stubborn like your father, his mother characterized him.

At least we have that in common.

After forwarding Skinner's secretary a copy of his itinerary, Mulder sprinted from the building to find his cab waiting.

The trip to Dulles was quick at this time of day, and his flight was on schedule. After picking up his ticket he filled his time by getting in touch with Horton in New York and making some arrangements. He tried Scully once more after this; she was still teaching in the lab.

"Just how long is this class?" Mulder asked irritably. From the other end came surprisingly clear sounds of shuffling paper and a creaking chair.

"Mm? Oh, well actually it's not the same session, it's the second--"

"All right--would you tell her George Hale is calling, please?"

"Oh, I couldn't interrupt!"

The man sounded so unnerved by the idea that Mulder was almost forced to sympathize. "Listen, I know she's a redhead, and your supervisor, but I guarantee you she'll want to take the call. Tell her it's urgent."

"Well, I don't--"

"Get her."

A few minutes later, Scully was on the line, speaking in low, cautious tones. "Where are you?"

Quashing the impulse to play Boris to her Natasha, Mulder said, "National Airport. Catching the shuttle up to La Guardia in about half an hour. How do you feel about joining me in the Big Apple for an autopsy?"

"What's going on?"

"I was hoping you could tell me," he said, allowing a mild wheedle to enter his voice. There was a slight pause on the other end of the line.

"I--I can't do it today. My last class isn't over until 4:30--"

Mulder quickly said, "Well, that's fine--I can have the M.E. wrap the body to go--"

On the other end of the line, Scully heard the note of eager appeal in her ex-partner's voice that always made her shoulders begin to hunch in a self-protective reflex. "Mulder--"

"You'll get it by five--"

The sigh heaved at Mulder from down the phone line should by rights have clipped him soundly on the ear. It was followed by Scully saying grudgingly, "What's the name?"

"Grissom, Saul. Listen, Scully--I do appreciate this."

There was a small ambiguous noise from the other end, and then: "Have you put a new battery in your cellular yet?"

"Um--oops."

"Mulder--"

"I'll pick one up in the city."

"Sooner rather than later. I don't like your being unreachable."

"I've been told that's an essential aspect of my personality."

Scully glanced down the hall where a lab assistant was staring in mute indecision at the vending machines, then turned away slightly, lowering her voice further. "Are you going straight to the New York field office?"

"Probably not. No one from their office has been officially assigned to this. Though they have condescended to provide me with a crime scene team to go over Grissom's apartment."

"What's the case?"

"Well, actually. . .I'm not sure yet that what I'm looking into qualifies as a case. The victim--if he is a victim--was prominent enough for his death to merit a preliminary investigation by one of the NYPD's detectives. He had some suspicions, but not enough cause to pursue the matter officially--or so he was told. He wasn't even able to secure the death site as a crime scene, which doesn't help."

"My god, Mulder, who knows what evidence has been eradicated since the death." Professional dismay colored Scully's words.

"Fire-fighters broke down the door to get in, but the paramedics pronounced death without disturbing the scene. And the detective did get some photos of the body in place and the dead man's apartment--for what they're worth. Not much to look at. No superficial evidence of violence. Nothing in the apartment to indicate a struggle. The body's on the waiting list for autopsy, but you know New York. They'll probably be glad to pass it to you."

"A lot of M.E.'s don't welcome the suggestion of claim-jumping, but you may be right in this case. I'll communicate any significant findings to them, of course, as a precautionary measure."

"I don't think we're looking at a serial killer here. I don't know what we're looking at yet, to tell the truth." Mulder glanced up at the departure schedule again, then at the clock. Momentarily distracted, he nonetheless caught the concern and curiosity borne down through the distancing wires to him by Scully's expressive voice.

"Mulder, what's going on? How did you get assigned this?"

"I asked for it. I can't tell you any more right now--I don't exactly consider your lab phone a secure line."

"Do you want to set up a check-in time? I could take a quick break later in the day, call you from a pay phone."

Despite the seriousness of Scully's tone, Mulder smiled at the suggestion. "Very sexy, Natasha, but let's wait on that. I don't know where I'll be or when. I was actually thinking of heading up to Connecticut first--the death site might not be compromised, but I have a hunch it's not going to provide much information. Grissom has a medical center in Stamford, incorporated with a few sideline ventures--a pharmaceutical company, and one that's developing a new kind of polysomnograph. Did I mention they've got some government contracts?"

Scully sighed. "Why am I not surprised?"

"Un-fucking-believable!"

Alex Krycek slammed his hand against the hood of his car, and then, in a fit of pique, kicked the wheel. Almost immediately he felt foolish. Smoothing back his hair, he glanced around the parking garage to see if anyone had noticed his display. He was alone.

After waiting forty-five minutes with increasing impatience for Mulder's arrival, Alex had felt a finger of suspicion tap him on the shoulder. He'd used the phone in the motor pool clerk's office, trying to track Mulder down, only to find the other agent had flown the coop.

"Shifty little prick," he muttered. It was apparent to Alex that Mulder's willingness to flout rules of polite conduct pointed directly to his larger indifference to authority; it was no doubt this unbridled will that had raised the agent out of the class of ordinary troublemakers and up to the level of a threat. Alex accepted the necessity of his assignment, the preeminent value of national security. Yet he wasn't without a measure of ambivalence: while one part of him--the disciplined, conditioned part--was unimpressed by Mulder's antics, another part of him grudgingly applauded the man's independence and entertained a sneaking admiration for his audacity. Alex had a deep streak of the nonconformist in his soul that hadn't seen the full light of day yet.

Now, pacing, he tried to figure out what to do next. The logical thing would be to follow Mulder to the airport. He might catch up with him there--or he might lose precious time on a wasted trip. Alex chewed his lip briefly in thought, then returned to the clerk's office to check on the flight, only to find that Mulder had lucked out, landing a seat on one leaving in just thirty more minutes, with a destination for La Guardia. That was cutting it too close for Alex--unless the flight was delayed. Quite seriously, he contemplated phoning in a bomb threat. It was a tempting idea, with many advantages, but he needed to position himself on Mulder's good side--if at all possible--and that was not the way to do it. And driving into New York City was a bitch. Not a good plan if he intended to actually to find Mulder, and not just follow behind him, dogging his trail.

Alex reviewed his options, and then a small smile crept up on his lips as an idea came to him. He had an even better alternative to pursuing Mulder, one that wouldn't make him feel quite so much like a greyhound chasing a rabbit. And, if all went well, it would force Mulder to submit to necessity and accept Krycek's role in the investigation.

Grissom Sleep Disorder Center, Stamford, CT

Thursday, 2:35 p.m.

"I'm not sure how long I'll be--do you mind waiting?"

The cab driver, a laconic black man with graying hair and tired eyes, looked in the rearview mirror at his fare. "You mind payin'?"

Mulder met his eyes in the mirror and smiled back at him. "Nope."

"Then I don't mind waitin'."

It would probably be a relatively pricey ride--already was, in fact--but the guarantee of quick transportation wasn't something an agent takes for granted. Mulder had caught the cab directly from La Guardia for the run up to Stamford, a decision prompted by a glimpse of the rental car lines. He'd pegged the delay at forty-five minutes, minimum, and hadn't been anywhere near in the mood for the wait. Always rebellious against bureaucracy, he was lately feeling even less inclined to wade through red tape. He was used to carrying a mental scythe. These days it was sharply honed.

He strode across the center's entryway, through a mild, unseasonal air that smelled of impending rain, into the center, whose not unpleasant odor compounded antiseptic, floor wax, and fresh paint. The receptionist, a perky advertisement for wholesome sleep habits and (depending on your taste) an inducement against them, directed him to Dr Charyn's office.

She was inside when he rapped on her open door, bent half down behind her desk, changing her shoes. His arrival caught her off guard, but Mulder, studying her response, judged that her slight fluster was probably more personal than professional--or criminal, for that matter. Hoping for a neutral but disarming tone, he flashed a quick, bland smile along with his badge.

"Agent Mulder, FBI. We spoke on the phone."

"Oh, yes. You're earlier than I expected, Mr Mulder--" Charyn greeted him with her own brief smile, rising behind her desk to shake his hand. She'd been clearly surprised on the phone that the FBI was investigating Grissom's death and was interested in his research, but now she appeared distracted. Her desk was piled with charts. The litter of a working lunch--half a tuna fish sandwich, soda, some chip crumbs in wax paper--lay scattered across the stacks.

"--or, I'm sorry--is it Dr Mulder?"

"No. . .I hold a degree in psychology from Oxford, but I wasn't chartered, and I've never pursued a doctorate here in the U.S."

"Well, you're still young, aren't you?" Charyn said easily.

Mulder looked bemused. "I--I'm not sure."

"Oh, you're young. Only the young have any doubt. Once you're old, you know it."

Possessed by man's instinctive wariness when faced with a woman talking about age, Mulder nodded and smiled for several moments longer than was perhaps politic.

Charyn gave him a dry, knowing look that brought Scully to mind.

"Have a seat. Sorry about the mess. I'll probably be appointed to take over Dr Grissom's duties, but right now I don't even have pro tem status--the board's meeting being held tonight to discuss administrative responses to the. . ." Charyn hesitated as if searching for the right word. A lengthy pause turned into an uncomfortable period.

"Did you know Dr Grissom very well?" Mulder asked gently.

"I don't think anyone knew him very well. . .it might give you some indication of the level of our relationship when I tell you that I worked with him these last four years and we never used each other's first names."

Mulder stared at her a moment with grave, owlish intensity. "Actually, I'm not sure it does. But I take it you're saying that you weren't close."

"No, not close." Charyn hesitated, looking out her window as if for a distraction, playing absently with an earring then tucking an imaginary strand of red hair behind one ear. Mulder took a moment to study her, eyes flicking assessingly over the details of her person: pale buttoned-to-the-neck blouse obscured by an impersonal lab coat, light gold chain just visible at the collar, name-tag slightly askew. Her face held layers of persona that suggested suburbanite and mom (not "mother", Mulder suspected), as well as professional woman, with the professional face in current dominance. She wore a plain wedding ring, and her nails were of moderate length and light gloss. Large glasses barricaded her eyes, and at times magnified them to unnatural width.

"Did you get along with Dr Grissom?"

"Yes. Yes, I think so. Mr Mulder, if you don't mind my asking frankly--am I a suspect in some sort of investigation? Is there any reason to believe that his death is due to other than natural causes?"

"You're not a suspect in anything, and the autopsy results aren't available yet."

Charyn searched his face for a moment, then nodded and smiled wryly. "I guess that's the formal and expected pas de deux, isn't it?"

"Most people are uncomfortable being questioned by an FBI agent."

Charyn waved a hand. "Oh, drug dealers, yes? S&L executives? Sure. But an innocent person, an average citizen--not to mention a trained psychologist--I feel I should be more at ease, and I find I can't help but worry."

"It's understandable."

"You said on the phone that you were interested in finding out more about our work here--"

To Mulder's moderate surprise, Charyn, at his request, agreed to show him around the clinic herself, displaying none of that loosely-leashed impatience that he was used to seeing in doctors asked to extend themselves in any way outside their normal range of duties.

"I won't tax your goodwill by making you lecture, but can you give me a general idea of the nature of the center's research?" Mulder asked as they set off down the ward.

"Alpha-wave analysis. That's our baby, so to speak. Dr Grissom's alpha-wave analysis defined the standard--revolutionized the way we think about sleep. His death is a tremendous loss to the scientific community."

Mulder glanced over. Despite his own recent promise, Dr Charyn had, perhaps unconsciously, slipped into the somewhat pedantic mode characteristic of doctors on the ward.

"How many kinds of sleep disorders did he treat?" Mulder said aloud.

"There are thirty-eight different dyssomnias and parasomnias--Dr Grissom treated them all with an unprecedented success ratio."

"Maintaining that kind of batting average must have taken its toll."

"Excellence demands certain sacrifices. . ."

It was a vague response suitable to Mulder's own vague remark. "Did he ever show any signs of psychological stress?" he asked, more directly.

Charyn's voice turned thoughtful as she played back over her memory. "Not really--except for his own occasional bout of insomnia."

"But he was never delusional?"

Startled, Charyn replied immediately, "Of course not." Mulder half expected her to add My goodness, no.

They had come up on a room with what appeared to Mulder to be a one-way observation window. His attention caught by the sight of the sleeping patient inside, he halted to observe.

"What's his story?"

"This patient's night terrors prevent him from cycling out of REM sleep into the more restful slow wave sleep. . .?" At Mulder's nod of comprehension, she went on, "It's still experimental, but what we're trying to do is modify his brain wave patterns externally."

"How do you do that?" Mulder asked absently, absorbed by the view. Odd to be watching someone--a stranger--sleep, as if it were a peep show.

"Electrical stimulation of the occipital lobe creates simple visual and auditory hallucinations."

"So it's actually possible to alter someone's dreams?" Mulder translated in restrained incredulity, wondering if he was perhaps misunderstanding her.

"In theory, yes. . .and, if all goes well, in practice--we're still very much in the early stages of development."

Fascinated by the idea, even as he was disturbed by the implications of Charyn's disingenuously casual revelation, Mulder studied the patient sleeping inside the room. "What ethical considerations have presented themselves in the course of your study?" He glanced over again, treating Charyn to a deceptively mild scrutiny. "I'm assuming some have."

Charyn's expression closed noticeably, as if she were drawing up a familiar and deliberate defense. "Mr Mulder, I follow the AMA principles of medical ethics. Any other 'considerations'--if I'm taking your insinuation correctly--are philosophical ones."

"I wasn't insinuating anything, Dr Charyn--"

"Oh, please. You can't B.S. a B.S., as my father used to say. Tell me, would you criticize a course of desensitization treatment for a patient with an irrational phobia--a fear of heights?"

"You're speaking of behavioral therapy--non-invasive."

"This is non-invasive."

"I grant you have semantics on your side, but I have a problem with people who consider electrical stimulation of the brain non-invasive."

With a rather patronizing look, Charyn said, "Mr Mulder. I correspond with other researchers around the country and the world--a close friend at Harvard, among them--who are currently using psychoactive drugs to analyze the neurochemical and neuropeptide mechanisms underlying sleep behaviors and circadian activity. Do you consider that line of research invasive?"

"That depends. I do realize that certain substances, used to treat certain aspects of certain mental disorders, have demonstrated therapeutic effects surpassing those of more traditional therapies. But I think that the increasing reliance on psychoactive--or psychotropic--medication allows for too many abuses, that it's being served up as a quick and easy fix by the pharmaceutical industry, and that it contributes to a reductive view of the mind and spirit. I also think that the drug industry is big business and that business, medicine, and mind-altering substances don't mix well."

Charyn's eyebrows had climbed toward her hairline. "I see. You obviously have very strong feelings on the matter, Mr Mulder. Do you mind if I ask--have you yourself ever undergone a course of psychopharmacological treatment?"

Mulder turned his ironic gaze on her. "Are you suggesting I need to?"

Dr Charyn laughed. "I'm sure not. I hope not. I really shouldn't have asked you that, I know. And that area of research isn't one of my specialties, but I do think your perspective is somewhat. . .alarmist. Therapeutic drugs function not so much as foreign substances, but as enhancers and regulators of normal biochemical processes."

"I've heard the arguments." Mulder jerked his chin in the direction of the sleeping man in the room, who had kicked off his blanket and was flexing restlessly.

"Do you treat any of the patients here in the clinic with any psychotherapeutic drugs or neurotransmitters--benzodiazepene, Dexedrine, tricyclic antidepressants, melatonin, serotonin--?"

"We do. We network closely with Montefiore and Columbia on narcolepsy treatments. But Dr Grissom, before his death, was phasing the clinic itself out of direct involvement with drug research and development, and concentrating chiefly on developing the alpha-wave analysis. Most of the drug-related R&D has moved to Somnatech's labs--you're familiar with our sister company?"

Mulder nodded assent. "At the risk of revealing my ignorance, I want to make sure I'm clear on this--the electrical stimulation you spoke of, that's the alpha-wave analysis, correct?"

Looking faintly surprised, Charyn said, "Oh, yes, sorry--I probably took for granted a greater degree of familiarity with the research than you've any reason to have. Once you start to specialize, you find yourself talking mostly to other specialists, or so it sometimes seems. My husband always complains that I abridge too much--and he's a neurologist." She turned on Mulder a look of mild, open scrutiny. "Actually, though, you're more familiar with the trends in the field than I would have expected."

Mulder exercised a bland smile. He could feel Dr Charyn studying him, could see the probing taking place behind her eyes, but he had no interest in sharing details of his own sleeping problems with her.

"It's an area of interest to me. . .tell me, have you ever heard suggested a parallel between the symptomatology of narcolepsy and the reported experiences of alien abductees and people who've had close encounters?"

Charyn stared at Mulder, bewildered. "I beg your pardon?"

"Both narcoleptics and abductees experience periods of "lost time". Abductees report feeling paralyzed and having difficulty breathing, similar to the sleep paralysis and respiratory difficulty narcoleptics experience in transitional states. Narcoleptics, as you know of course, may have vivid hypnagogic or hypnopompic hallucinations, including the sensation of flying. Narcoleptic attacks often occur while driving a car--as do close encounters--and can involve automatic behavior, which would correspond to the lost time of abductees or persons contacted."

"I'm. . .I'm sorry, Mr Mulder--I'm not sure I see your point. What does this have to do with your investigation?"

"Nothing," Mulder said mildly. "I just thought it was interesting."

Charyn's lips remained parted for several moments as if she were at a loss for words, then she cleared her throat. "Well. . .are there any other questions I can help you with?"

"Yes, actually. I'd like to understand your alpha-wave analysis in more detail, and ask you some questions about your government contracts. I'll also want to build up a profile of Dr Grissom based on what you know of his habits and behaviors. But first--can you explain to me what these polysomnograph readings indicate. . . ?"

4:05 p.m.

After leaving the bureau, it had taken Alex a little over three hours to make the trip from D.C. to Stamford (a pile-up on the interstate had slowed him down), then he'd stopped to study his street map and grab a quick lunch. When he finished eating he called the clinic.

"GSLC, this is Amy, can I help you?"

"Agent Krycek, FBI. I spoke to you earlier about meeting with a Dr. . ." He flipped open his notepad. "Charyn? I'm on my way over and wanted to confirm her availability and get directions."

"Oh--what?"

Alex's lips compressed in an effort at patience. "I'm calling to confirm a meeting with Dr Charyn. Krycek. FBI."

"But I thought. . .oh, are you with the other agent?"

Alex, sitting in his car outside the Chinese restaurant he'd just left, directed a blank, unfocused gaze on the fat koi swimming in its street-window tank. One hand clenched on the steering wheel, the other gripped the plastic casing of the car phone with lethal force. No way is this happening.

"Other agent?"

"Yes, there's already someone here--do you want me to page him?"

"Thanks, Amy, but that's okay. I think I'll just surprise him."

4:20 p.m.

It had been nearly another hour before Mulder wound up his meeting with Charyn. He left the clinic feeling that he could have spent several more hours--or even days--studying Grissom's research, without doing more than skimming the surface. He still wasn't absolutely certain it was significant, but he strongly suspected it was. Why else would he have been tipped to the full circumstances of Grissom's death? A man dies of no apparent cause after reporting a hallucinatory event, a man who just happens to be conducting sleep-disorder research involving a type of electro-cortical stimulation that produces hallucinations--is that coincidence? Mulder didn't think so.

On the other hand, Charyn had unequivocally stated that Grissom--as far as she knew--had never played guinea pig to his own device, and that even if he had, clinical trials had so far produced no evidence of hallucinatory or delusional side effects in the waking state. Moreover, the treatment was currently effected through direct electrode stimulation, which made for a problematic suicide or homicide scenario.

Walking from the building, Mulder abstractedly wondered whether he should reconsider his own resistance to treatment for his sleeping problems. Alpha-wave analysis wasn't top on his list, and he'd always shied away from drugs; still, there were other, more appropriate courses for what plagued him. It was almost a decade since he'd suffered night terrors, but even as recently as a few years ago a psychologist he'd consulted had diagnosed a nightmare disorder that showed no signs of abating. Mulder had made the initial visit hoping only to glean some useful biofeedback techniques; at the hour's end he'd impulsively agreed to attend regular twice-weekly sessions. The psychologist had adopted a course of treatment based on his own brand of the cognitive-behavioral approach, but after three months of this had thrown up his hands (literally) in defeat. You're a psychologist's professional nightmare, Mulder, if you'll pardon my choice of words. Despite your facility at self-analysis I'm beginning to suspect you are deliberately resisting letting go of your irrational guilt feelings about your sister's "abduction". I think you have been deceiving yourself--and me--about your desire and willingness to address and alter your self-defeating cognitions.

Actually, Mulder had stated his objections to a course of "rational" mental revision very clearly right at the start, and it was the doctor who had deceived himself, based on his own expectations. They both should have known better, Mulder thought. And he never had solved his sleeping problems. Maybe if he resumed hypnotherapy he'd have better luck this time. . .

Alex saw Mulder come out of the clinic. He'd been sitting in his car for the last twenty minutes, building up a good head of steam, waiting for Mulder to finish his visit rather than chancing an ugly display by interrupting. He watched with malicious satisfaction as the other agent reached the curb, stared blankly at the spot where his cab had been, then scanned up and down the street in confusion. Alex got out of his car, slamming the door to catch his attention. Even from better than ten yards he saw the mixed expression of dismay and disbelief that hit Mulder's face like a cream pie on seeing him. He knew he was caught, and Alex felt a stab of triumph, but he had no intention of letting that soften his ire. He was ready for a confrontation.

He strode up to Mulder, gesturing angrily at the street. "I paid off your cab--yeah--I don't appreciate being ditched like someone's bad date." Alex was forced to pull up short and backtrack as Mulder began walking past him toward the car.

"I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings," Mulder said quietly.

Alex had no illusion that this was a genuine apology. Mulder had ditched him deliberately, probably suspecting Alex to be exactly what he was: a spy. But Alex had known from the first that he'd be working under a handicap of suspicion, so he was ready for every contingency. Deciding to provoke the subject, he did his best to radiate bewildered incomprehension. "Where do get off copping this attitude? I mean, you don't even know the first thing about me."

Mulder gave him a pointed look. "Exactly."

Krycek slowed, falling slightly behind Mulder, forcing him to turn and stop to continue the conversation. He took a deep breath and began the speech he'd prepared for this event. "You know, back at the Academy, some of the guys used to make fun of you--"

"Oh stop it," Mulder interrupted sarcastically. "Now you're going to hurt my feelings."

"Some of us followed your work, believed in what you were doing because we knew that there was more out there than they were telling us."

There was a pause as Mulder studied him silently and expressionlessly, for all the world as if Alex were a bug under glass. Alex took another deep breath, began to continue, then mentally cursed as Mulder's cellular rang, interrupting them.

Mulder abandoned his scrutiny of Krycek with an odd tug of reluctance, turning away slightly to answer his call. "Yeah."

Scully, bless her clinical little heart, cut right to the chase as always. "Dr Grissom didn't die from cardiac arrest."

"Well, what is it?"

"I think you should come back up here and take a look for yourself. I haven't even started on the chest and the abdomen yet and I'll have a lot more to tell you then."

Mulder could only hope it would be worth the trip, since it was going to cost him the rest of the day, cutting short his hands-on investigation before it was barely off the ground. Still, he couldn't go very far without any forensic information, and it must be good if Scully wanted him there personally. He looked at Krycek, calculating rapidly.

"I can make it in two hours." He rang off and went to the car, only to find the driver's door locked.

Krycek dangled the keys in front of him. "Where we goin'?" he drawled mildly.

Mulder searched the other agent's face a moment, eyes narrowed, then nodded in resignation. "Fine. Give me the keys. I'm driving."

No problem, Top Dog, Alex thought. You go right ahead and divide your concentration. Make it easy for me.

Alex dropped the keys in his hand before walking around the car. "Two hours--that sounds like a warp-speed trip back to HQ."

"Quantico."

Alex looked at him across the hood of the car. "In other words, you're planning to drive ten to twenty miles over the speed limit all the way." At Mulder's sharp glance, he held up his hands and added, "Hey, you want to ride the radio, bird-dog the local yokels, be my guest."

Mulder checked his watch, thinking about commuter traffic. "Shit," he said under his breath. He got in the car, flipping open his phone and calling Scully back to give her a revised ETA.

Alex strapped in and gazed out the window as he listened to Mulder's quick one-sided conversation. It seemed he'd be meeting Scully sooner than he'd expected. He was glad of the opportunity; he'd been wondering how to arrange such a convenience on his own.

Mulder hung up the phone and tossed it on the car seat between them. Alex watched sidelong as the other agent then proceeded through a pre-driving ritual whose every point red-flagged the profile of a classic control-freak. Adjust seat. Adjust mirror. Pull on seat belt. Re-adjust mirror. Adjust side-mirror. Start car. Set air conditioning thermostat. Log mileage. Check car phone. Check car radio. Check attachable light, siren, P.A. system.

Mulder looked gravely over at Alex. "Did you check the spare when you signed out the car?"

"Yes."

"Are the shotguns in order?"

"Yes."

Mulder stared at him as if debating whether or not to get out and double-check the trunk, then put the car into drive and moved off down the street. Alex watched in fascination as Mulder adjusted the rearview mirror once again, then scanned the dashboard gauges. Loosened his tie. Attempted instinctively to rest his arm on the window, which was closed. Shifted. Turned on the radio, ran through every station--digitally--then again--manually. Turned off the radio. Checked the accessibility of his gun in reference to his seat belt. Put both hands on the steering wheel at ten and two o'clock. Sighed.

Alex started to say something, then caught his tongue between his teeth and quickly turned his head toward the window to hide a smirk. When he thought he had all whimsical impulses well in hand, he said innocuously, "Have you had any lunch?"

"No."

"There're some fast-food places right before the on-ramp for the interstate."

Mulder didn't answer, but when they came up on a McDonald's he pulled into the drive-through. He ordered a Happy Meal, changing the cheeseburger to a double, the fry to a large, and the drink to a shake. There was a dead silence from the speaker, and then a staticky voice repeated the entire order back, followed by another doubtful pause.

"You sure you want a Happy Meal? You payin' a lot extra. You can get the number three combo, cost less."

"I like the little toys," said Mulder. "What have you got this week?"

The speaker box did not immediately answer. A long minute passed, during which Alex watched Mulder stare glassily at the menu board as if committing it to deep memory. Then the speaker blurted forth a hissing afflatus through which its oracular voice slowly returned, as if rising from a well. ". . .it's, uh, a Dr Robotnik. . . ?"

Mulder didn't begin eating until they were on the interstate, and then he devoured his food in a dreamy fugue state while staring straight ahead at the road. There was a long silence after he finished his lunch, which Alex for his part filled by weighing the various merits of various conversational tactics--though he had no intention of speaking first, none at all.

Ten minutes went by. Fifteen.

Thirty.

By the time forty-five minutes had passed Alex was gritting his teeth and matching Mulder's eyes-front example of catatonia with difficulty. Not the way to go, Alex. Not the way to make friends. Alex hated sitting still; hated pregnant silences, particularly ones that seemed to be developing toward full-term. He was just on the verge of giving in, and had begun mentally framing a remark on the case, when Mulder, out of the blue, cleared his throat. Alex nearly jumped out of his suit.

"How did you find me?"

"I didn't. I thought you were going to New York." Alex gave him an accusing look. "That's what you put down on your itinerary."

"Changed my mind." Pause. "What made you decide to visit Grissom's clinic?"

"Background. . .speaking of which. What did you get?"

At first, Alex thought that Mulder wasn't going to answer, that he intended to try and maintain the big shut-out. Then in a flat voice he recited the facts he'd gathered on Grissom's research and what Charyn had known of the victim's personal habits.

Alex listened without comment or question until Mulder finished. He flicked a small glance at the older agent, impressed despite himself at the note-free summary of almost two hours worth of questioning. "What angle are you taking on this?"

"Funny," Mulder said, turning his head to pierce him through with shark's eyes. "I was going to ask you the same thing. I'm wondering what made you take an interest in this case."

"I got a tip. What about you?"

"Psychic hotline."

Alex threw him a dry look. "Yeah, I heard you got a red phone to them right on your desk."

"You seem to have heard a lot about me."

Alex's lips parted and he stared at the other man in unfeigned astonishment. "Well--duh."

Caught off guard, Mulder flushed. Duh, indeed. Of course Krycek had heard of him. The copy-machine repairman had heard of him. The Alaskan field office's S.A.C.'s 63-year old secretary sent him Christmas cards. The janitors dropped in for coffee and conspiracy theory on their breaks. So why not Krycek?

They probably pass my photo out to all the new recruits with a warning and a whistle.

"There's probably not an agent--hell, an employee--in the bureau who hasn't heard of you," Krycek continued. "You must know that."

"Actually I try not to think about my reputation. A careful avoidance allows me to get dressed in the morning." He stared ahead, concentrating on traffic, studiously not looking at Krycek. His cheeks still burned slightly.

"It's--it's not that bad, Mulder."

"Spare me."

"No, really. You'd be surprised how many people credit your beliefs. Bureau employees are still U.S. citizens, and Gallup poll figures on the number of adult Americans who believe in UFOs have remained steady at around fifty percent for the last twenty years. I'd bet if Gallup had asked whether them whether they believed in a government cover-up of UFO contacts, they'd have gotten a similar figure. Think about that, Mulder--fifty percent. That's half the bureau."

"I suspect there's a significantly different statistical break-down by level of education and employment type, Krycek."

"Still--"

They exchanged a look, and Alex made sure to hold Mulder's gaze as long as possible, keeping as frank an expression as he could manage. When Mulder spoke again, his voice had relaxed a little.

"What do you believe?"

"About--?"

"UFOs. Abductions. Government cover-ups. Roswell. MJ-12."

"I don't know that I believe anything yet--I've never had any hard, first-hand evidence of alien contact or conspiracy." As Mulder nodded once in silent approval, Alex added, "But I want to believe, at least in the existence of intelligent non-human life. I want to believe we're not alone--"

"Why?"

"I don't--I don't know--it's just a feeling, a need. I think a lot of people have it. Some people take faith in religion. I. . .can't. I can't live by two-thousand year old myths. But I grew up on science fiction, speculative fiction. So. . ." He shrugged. "I think if we knew we weren't unique, that faster-than-light travel was possible, I think that would change our perspective for the better."

"You think?"

"Are you going to give me the cynic's view on progress, Mulder?"

"Oh, I'm sure you know that already."

"You don't think I believe in the capacity of the human race to better itself? Yeah, well. . .you're probably right. Maybe I just want to believe."

Mulder smiled without removing his gaze from the road. That was three times now in as many minutes that Krycek had used the phrase; it was beginning to sound like a challenge. "You've been in my old office," he said. It was a statement, not a question.

"Yeah. I went looking for you there this morning. Everyone said to look for you in the basement. Nobody knows you've moved. Interesting ambiance."

"Thanks. We try."

"You asked for this case--the Grissom case. Are you expecting to find some evidence of paranormal activity?"

"I don't know. I've been warned against theorizing ahead of the facts."

Alex tossed him a grin. "The infamous Dr Scully?"

Mulder's reaction was immediate and sharp, and the look he threw Alex made him instinctively flinch as if from a venomous dart. "Infamous? Where the hell did you come up with that?"

"Sorry. Just a figure of speech." Alex held up his hands in a conciliatory gesture. "She guest-lectured at the Academy on the principles of forensic evidence. She struck me as being sharp as all hell. Actually, I think I remember her making that warning--against theorizing ahead of the evidence."

After a moment of grudging silence, Mulder seemed to relax again. "Sorry. I didn't mean to jump down your throat." His voice was quiet, the apology sincere from what Alex could tell.

"'S'all right."

They lapsed into a shared silence during which Alex congratulated himself on breaking the ice and Mulder wondered whether or not to take his new partner at face value.

Face value? Yeah, right. A bureau boy scout, a Junior G-man with a yen for close encounters? Who just happened to be assigned to work with Fox Mulder, bureau basket case? Who are they kidding? It was just another maneuver: first they assign the skeptic, then the eager-beaver "I want to believer". He did find it odd that they'd worked in that order; it would have been better strategy to run the skeptic second, but who knew the reasoning of the covert mind.

Except. . .it was almost too easy. They knew he was paranoid. They knew he was smart (no false modesty there). He'd twigged Scully's purpose from day one, after all. Surely they knew that anyone they assigned him would be suspect. Perhaps they just thought it necessary, SOP, and didn't care whether he suspected, or knew, they were watching him. Closely. Well--it was your average prisoner's dilemma, wasn't it. He could never be sure how deep their machinations went. But he could be sure now how serious they were. With his informant's death everything had changed. Scully he could trust, but only because he'd gone out on a limb in the first place, given her the opportunity to prove herself. He'd taken a risk, and it had paid off. But if she'd been assigned to work with him today--after all that had happened? Would he have let himself take a chance on her? He certainly couldn't take the same chance with Krycek.

Could he take even the smallest chance on Krycek?

Mulder glanced out of the corner of his eye. The younger agent's profile--long lashes, gently snubbed nose, faintly recessive chin--conveyed an impression of mild harmlessness that was hard to reconcile with the gun on his hip. I can't trust him, Mulder reminded himself. He knew this to be true. He just hated that it was so.

He broke the silence ruthlessly, his voice cool and unemotional. "So, what do they want you to report on me?"

Krycek turned his head to look at him. His face made clear that he wasn't going to pretend not to know what Mulder was talking about, but his expression revealed very little else. When he answered, after a minute, his own voice was just as cool and flat as Mulder's.

"Listen. I know you give credence to certain. . .conspiracy theories. Maybe with good reason. I don't know enough to say. But I have no role in your paranoid drama, Mulder, and I'd appreciate it if you leave me out of it. I'm not going to take it personally--this time." He paused. "If I were some sort of--spy--I'd probably have a hard time disproving it. Not being one, I have no way to prove it. So let's just leave it at that, okay?"

Mulder swallowed and said nothing immediately. Despite himself, he felt slightly ashamed. Good comeback, he thought. Maybe too good. If you are a spy, you'd have been ready for that. It was a good enough comeback, though, that he didn't say what he was thinking aloud. Krycek had effectively cut short any further discussion of the subject.

"Okay. I'll leave it at that." For now.

FBI Academy, Quantico

Thursday evening, 8:17p.m.

By the time they reached Quantico, dusk had fallen, leaving only streaks of pink in the lowered sky. When Mulder walked in on Scully in her lab her hands were full of gut.

Nothing like the sight of a giant eviscerated organ at dinner-time to get the old gastric juices flowing.

"Spleen or pancreas?"

Scully turned, smiling, as he spoke, and Mulder felt a rush of fond happiness at the sight of her familiar face that nearly knocked him off his feet. Unable to express his feelings, he found himself making a broad gesture with his arms, a kinetic reflex that hastily aborted itself. He was glad she hadn't mistaken it for an invitation to hug.

"Stomach," Scully said dryly, "and I was just about to start on it."

They exchanged a warm look, Scully half-consciously searching for signs that Mulder had missed her as much as she'd missed him, Mulder feeling himself become animated for the first time in a long day--Pinnochio taking his first breath.

Then Scully noticed Krycek. Mulder could see the direction of her gaze, the slight alteration in her face as she assessed the other agent's presence. He glanced back over his shoulder, feeling vaguely guilty, as if he were introducing a new lover to an old. But it wasn't as if Krycek had set his pulse to doing the rhumba. He'd drop Junior down the nearest vent to Dreamland if it meant getting Scully back. None of this had been his choice.

"Oh, uh, this is Alex Krycek. . .we're working the case together."

Alex, who'd been hanging back in a show of polite deference, came forward to stand beside Mulder, offering his hand with a smile.

Scully's own smile was perfunctory. "Good to meet you," she said with casual disinterest, brushing by between them, ignoring his hand. Alex dropped it, hoping it was just the fact that she'd been handling an eviscerated stomach that was behind the snub.

Scully moved to the lab table, on which Grissom lay, arms upraised in rigor.

To Mulder, she said, "Notice the pugilistic attitude of the corpse--"

Alex turned and noticed the body for the first time himself, its bleached flesh illuminated like a ghastly pastiche of raw fish under the harsh white lab lights. The abdominal cavity was wide open and empty, its chest plate removed, the trunk's incised skin flaps drawn up over the shoulders and face, overlapping the unhinged scalp. It was one of the neatest path jobs he'd seen, displaying an almost old-fashioned degree of meticulousness--no blood on the table or floor--but the effect was still horrific. He looked quickly away, fighting a gag reflex. His own response to death always knocked him for a loop. He'd seen his share of dead bodies, including a few done in by his own hands, but the sight of a gutted corpse consistently nauseated him, perhaps because--as an acquaintance had once glibly theorized--it foreshadowed his own mortality. The glibness of a theory didn't necessarily invalidate it, Alex supposed.

Mulder and Scully looked over at him, then turned away to resume discussion, more in dismissal than contempt. Or so Alex hoped. He scowled at Mulder's back. He loathed that acquired nonchalance in the presence of death so typical of pathologists and cops of all stripe. Experience had taught him that he could kill when necessary, and that the exercise of that power wasn't without its excitement, but once a thing was dead it was, in Alex's opinion, an object to be disposed of, preferably with all dispatch. Bodies should be burned, not buried.

Mulder and Scully were standing very close and had, perhaps unconsciously, turned their own bodies into an enclosure that shut Alex out. They'd established a private, intimate space that didn't strike him as particularly professional. If there'd been a Cone of Silence available in the lab, they'd have activated it, Alex thought resentfully. He wondered if they were lovers. The chairman said no, but hell, maybe they did it in the lab, on the autopsy tables. Who'd be the wiser?

"This condition generally occurs several hours after death," Scully said. Alex abandoned his speculation and paid attention, drawing closer to them. "It's caused by a coagulation of muscle proteins when the body is exposed to extremely high temperatures."

"Like fire?" Mulder asked.

"This degree of limb flexion is observed exclusively in burn-related victims."

"There was no fire," Alex said. Mulder and Scully glanced briefly at him again in unison, then Scully continued, not addressing him directly, but ceding a tacit acknowledgment.

"--and no epidermal burns to indicate as much. But when I opened up his skull, I found extradural hemorrhages, which can only be caused by intense heat. . .somehow this man suffered all the secondary but none of the primary physiological responses to having been in a fire." Her voice, to Alex's ears, sounded intense and incredulous, as if she couldn't believe what she was saying, and had gradually dropped until she was speaking in hushed tones. He studied her and Mulder both, trying to intuit the depth and nature of their relationship, and what role Scully played in Mulder's investigative routine.

"Any theories?" Mulder asked quietly.

"I can't begin to explain what could have caused something like this. I mean, it's almost as if--" Scully hesitated.

"What?" Mulder's voice was an intense, hungry whisper.

Scully, reluctantly drawing her words out, said at last: "As if--his body--believed--it was burning." She looked at Mulder almost challengingly, as if expecting him to scoff, but--hey--this was Mulder. Alex mentally smirked.

Mulder absorbed her words, nodded once with abstracted concentration, then turned suddenly to look at Alex. Intense gray-green eyes lasered into his. Startled at finding himself the focus of that acute gaze, Alex raised his brows questioningly, but Mulder didn't immediately address him.

"Mmm. . .how far have you gotten with the body?"

Scully cleared her throat. "Well, actually, when you told me you'd be longer, I breaked for dinner." Her tone took on a combination of defensiveness and apology. "I hadn't eaten since breakfast, and that was before seven this morning--"

"Hey, it's okay." Mulder smiled.

"--and then my mother called," Scully finished. She flicked a glance at Alex. "The conversation lasted longer than I thought, and as soon as I got off with her I got snagged by the SAC on another case--"

Mulder took her by the shoulders and shook her gently, fondly. "Scully, you don't have to make justifications. I'm the one who asked you to stay late. Listen, we'll hang around while you finish up. We can do dinner--dessert for you. Talk about the case."

"Actually I'm pretty much done except for running the gut." She grimaced faintly. "And you probably wouldn't enjoy that." She flicked Alex another look, this one rather malicious. "Very smelly."

Alex flashed his teeth at her in his whitest smile. "I can smell the bile already, thanks."

There was a pause.

"So," Mulder said finally. "Who's up for Denny's?"

Scully had informed Mulder in no uncertain terms that she wasn't driving back to D.C. that night just to feed his grease habit. "Hey, Scully," he'd said, "if I have a monkey on my back, does that make it a grease monkey?" She'd just looked at him. Mulder, abandoning the Denny's pilgrimage, had then expressed a hankering for steak, at which Scully and Krycek both audibly snorted. After they'd collectively mourned the impossibility of getting a decent steak in Quantico, Krycek suggested Greek, then immediately killed his own idea by morosely recollecting that Yasou's closed at seven. "McDonald's or Subway?" Mulder had finally asked, rather sulkily.

They ended up in McDonald's, an odd-looking trio, their dark plain business suits making them stand out like mourners at a circus in the violently fluorescent interior. To Scully in particular, the effect of entering such a cartoonish pop-culture milieu so recently on the heels of the severe realm of forensic pathology made for a dreamlike juxtaposition. She yawned as the men ordered, wondering how and why she let herself be talked into sacrificing so much of her free time--her life. She could be at home watching Seinfeld right now. Her eyes felt gritty.

Mulder, much to Scully's relief, did not press his luck with the catatonic cashier by ordering one of his souped-up Happy Meals. Standing off to the side, she observed him. His order had been taken but his face remained slightly upturned toward the menu board, or perhaps the wall clock. Transfixed by unknowable thoughts, he projected the serene aspect of a wandering scholar lost in the world--a GQ Buddha, or some renegade Benedictine monk tripping meditatively on Ecstasy.

Krycek made for an unlikely sidekick, she thought, letting her gaze slide past Mulder to rest on him. Standing on Mulder's left and slightly behind, unconsciously replicating his pose as he scanned the menu, Krycek seemed to be a silhouetted shadow to the other man, doubling him like a televisual ghost. His presence bothered her, but she wasn't sure how much to trust her instincts. The closing of the X-Files, the murder of Mulder's informant before her eyes--these and other, lesser ills had sent her spinning down into herself, an inward spiral to that tightly wound place in her soul which was like a skein of wool bundling a dark uncertainty and an emptiness. She missed Mulder, and when she saw him these days she felt as if she could see massed around him the forces of evil.

But maybe in this particular case, Dana, you're just a little. . .jealous?

And then Krycek turned his head and, behind Mulder's line of vision, drew a bead on her, meeting her gaze as if he'd read her thought. Bone-cold eyes reflected hers, clearing so quickly she wondered if she'd only imagined that glittering mirror of malice.

"Do you want a shake or something?" he asked her. "I'll buy."

She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak. Mulder gave her an inquiring look and she shook her head again, then excused herself to the bathroom. By the time she returned the men had found a table and tucked their similarly lanky bodies into its orange, bolted chairs like a pair of storks folding themselves up. Her smile at the sight of them could not be entirely suppressed. She walked over to the table and sat next to Mulder.

"I hear the Chateau '83 is pretty good here," she said, eyeing his dripping Big Mac with an ambivalent pang of nausea and desire.

"This does have some nutritious value, Scully. . .though I'm not sure for which animal's diet."

A burst of timely raucous laughter erupted from the far corner of the restaurant, which a group of drastically scruffy youth had seized and settled. Piles of backpacks, radios, and assorted luggage strewed the area. Tattoos, elaborate piercings, distressed hair, and toxically damaged clothes established a tone of choice. Given the proximity to Quantico, all this--and the table-top perches most had assumed--had the flavor of symbolic territorial incursion.

Krycek, whose back was to the group, glanced at them via their reflection in the night-lit windows. "Prozac Nation on the eve of the revolution," he said dryly, before biting into a messy clump of fries.

Mulder laughed. Scully's brows leaped as if snagged by fish-hooks, and she had to duck her head quickly to hide her surprised reaction. It had been a while since she'd heard him laugh. Weeks. What was he doing chuckling at this twerp's weak pitch of wit? Inanely she thought of that old commercial in which the disgruntled wife wonders why her husband never asks for another cup of her coffee. He never laughs at my jokes, she thought self-mockingly.

Okay. . .so he did. Now and then. But not lately.

"What exactly did you want to discuss, Mulder?" she said aloud, more abruptly than she'd intended. She watched him pause mid-bite, give her one of those tolerant looks that made her want to poke him, set his burger down, wipe his mouth, sip his soda. Just when she thought she was going to grind the caps off her teeth, he spoke.

"I wanted to pick your brain--so to speak. What do you know about alpha-wave analysis?"

"I've never heard of it," she said bluntly. And you damn well better want more than that.

"Dr Scully, I'm surprised at you. . .that's okay, I didn't know anything either. It's still experimental, pre-patent, and there've been no published papers. It's what Grissom was working on in his clinic. I gather they've developed the hardware more or less to their liking--at least for the initial specs--and are working now on refining the technique. It involves--"

"Mulder. . .I don't mean to cut short your lecture, but I'm very tired." A building wave of exhaustion and exasperation had suddenly crested, bringing her patience to an end. The hurt in his eyes made her heart twinge, but she held her ground. "Unless it's about the autopsy, my brain is in no state to be picked right now. . .it would probably crumble into a soggy mass if you tried."

"Sorry, Scully."

Mulder's voice was quiet, and his face had taken on that expressionless quality that she knew all too well. Reflexively, before he even spoke again, Scully had tensed for the inevitable retaliation.

"You suggested that I come down here. I came. I was under the impression you had some information about the examination you wanted to communicate personally. Maybe I haven't been paying close enough attention--have I heard anything yet that you couldn't have faxed me?" His voice was bland, seemingly conveying nothing but a mild and professional curiosity. It was, in her unexpressed opinion, his deadliest tone of voice.

Scully glanced at the watchful Krycek. "Can we speak alone? Outside?" At Mulder's brief nod, she rose, pulling her purse over her shoulder. She gave Krycek a tiny, perfunctory smile. "Nice meeting you."

When they were outside, Mulder stared at her testily. "You want to tell me what that was all about?"

Scully matched his gaze coolly, wondering if he ever guessed how much forbearance she exercised at his offhand rudeness. If he were her brother, she'd have smacked him; if he were a stranger, she'd have reamed him out and left him quaking in his wing-tips; but, he being Mulder, she put up with it. Sometimes she couldn't even recall why.

"I had a Fed-Ex today. A few hours after your first call. I didn't want to mention it on the phone." She pulled an envelope from her purse, handed it to him. "It's for you. Someone must not have trusted to send it to your office, and probably didn't know your home address. I opened it, had a look through the photos. . .at least you didn't have to pay for these." Then she raised a brow ironically. "Did you?"

"I don't know where these came from. These look like shots of that craft I saw at Ellens. Like the photo I got there."

"That's what I thought," Scully admitted, studying his abstracted face as he shuffled through the stack of photos, any excitement he was feeling (it was hard to be sure) evident only in his gleaming eyes, in the reserved intensity of his stance. In his face itself there was barely a flicker of life; he might have been wearing his bones on the surface, like a mask.

He's so controlled, Scully thought. When did that happen? Ellens? But to believe that would be to indulge in her own selective revision of memory. She'd watched the slow eclipse occur, the dimming of that bright, contagious exuberance he'd possessed when she first met him. The change in him had been gradual, not easily assigned one obvious cause. And (this was why she avoided the matter) she herself sometimes felt partly responsible, as if--overly dramatic though it was--as if her cold rationality had leached warmth from him, as if she'd damped his flame.

These were horrible feelings and deeply secreted fears; and every time they surfaced she felt herself emotionally regressing to awkward, early adolescence, a period in her life when she'd been at her wet-blanket worst, chunky, tomboyish, deficit in friends, over-awed by her father's shadow. She'd been independent too, and strong-minded, but not indifferent to social pressures. What teenager was? She'd feared then that she might never change--never have a boyfriend, never escape the chains of her Catholicism, or the only slightly gentler bindings of her close-knit family.

Did she have a life yet--her own life?

It was sometimes hard to tell.

"Speaking of Ellens, have you had any more flashbacks--any more dreams?"

"Not recently. I think I pretty much remember everything now, though, except for the period of time when I was drugged and probably unconscious." He looked up from the photos. "I don't suppose you've turned up anything new on ECT research lately? You haven't mentioned anything for a couple months now."

In that moment Scully remembered one of the reasons why she admired Mulder. There weren't too many people she knew of who would be able to retain their composure discussing such a subject. If she had been the one drugged and given some form of experimental electroshock treatment--at her own government's hands--for the purpose of inducing of retrograde amnesia and covering up military secrets--well, she suspected she wouldn't have taken it quite so smoothly.

"No, nothing. If there is any experimental research going on, it's highly classified."

"None of those friends of yours at NIMH ever called with anything?"

"No. I'm sorry, Mulder--"

He cut short her sympathy with a gesture of his hand. "It's not important."

"Of course it's important. This is your brain we're talking about, Mulder."

"Oh that. Well, I was always a few volts below threshold anyway, according to most people." He smiled. "It's been over a year. I think we can pretty much rest assured that the only damage my brain suffers is the self-induced kind."

She treated him to her dryest look. "Well--at least you're not a Prozac nationalist."

He sketched a salute. "Not yet, comrade." He returned the photos to the envelope. "I know someone who'll love to see these. I'm glad you had me come--sorry you got designated mail-drop." He tapped her arm with the envelope. "And I'm sorry I dragged you to this McMeeting. When--if--you've got some free time, I'd love to have your thoughts on the case. You can fax any findings as they come in to the office--excuse me, the new office, such as it is." He looked through the wide glass windows. "New office. New partner." He made a small face at the window, then turned a solemn gaze on Scully. "The gallows in my garden, people say / Is new and neat and adequately tall. / I tie the noose on in a knowing way / As one that knots his necktie for a ball."

Mulder watched as fine brows rose and full lips twitched.

"Don't you like him?"

"Well, it's too early to hang him. I think." Mulder gave Krycek another look. He was loosely sprawled in his cramped chair, rotating his coffee cup absently. He appeared to be reading the paper lining of his meal tray, which perhaps accounted for the faint sneer pulling at his face.

Mulder's brow wrinkled lightly. "You know, I don't know why--but he kind of reminds me of a really tall Kewpie doll."

"Mulder--I'm going home now."

"What was that all about?"

As Mulder returned, Krycek stood, radiating enough nervous nocturnal energy to power a good-sized nuclear sub, gathering up trays and trash, resembling nothing so much as a career busboy in a borrowed suit.

Mulder, standing by and jingling his keys, beginning to feel a bit wired himself, shook his head. "It's not related to the case."

Krycek's gaze fell on the envelope. "What's that?"

"An envelope, Krycek."

"Dirty pictures? It's okay, Mulder." His brows did a lewd little jig. "You don't have to explain."

Mulder sighed. Tapped the envelope against his hip as he waited for Krycek to dump the trays. Shifted from foot to foot. "You're a neat boy. This is good. Can we go?"

The look Krycek threw at him was near lethal; the height his eyebrows achieved near miraculous. "Anyone ever tell you you're a brat?"

"I log the times."

"That must take up a lot of space on your drive."

The temperature had dropped and the air was cool and moist. Breeze-whipped trees streamed loosely by in the Virginia night, waving and brushing the lower edge of the huge sky. A full moon's light illuminated the landscape, rendering it a blue underworld of sponges and reefs. Mulder, the vehicle controls at his command, had lowered both front windows and was resting a half-bared arm on his. Alex didn't mind. The wind tasted good after the long and muggy August day. He laid an arm on his own window and let himself sink. . .into the rhythmic cocoon of the car's shadowy interior. . .into the all too brief pocket of time given by travel. . .into what he knew was a transient sense of safety and peace. He felt like a crab curling happily down into the dark heart of a shell. Sleepily he watched the road appear in the car's lights, darkness pushed off like snow from a plow's blade. The white lines slid by, pulled under the car by the light, eaten by the light. . .suddenly the light vanished.

Alex sat bolt upright in his seat. "What the fuck--"

"Full moon."

"No shit--what the--? You a werewolf, Mulder? You have a reason for being this fucking crazy?"

"Relax. Shut up." Mulder's voice was placid, toneless. Vastly calm.

Slowly Alex sat back. The road unfurled like a gray and silvery ribbon now. The world's natural darkness--its light--washed right through the car, in through the windows, borne on the rushing wind.

Alex took a deep breath. Let it out. The night flew by.

An indeterminate time later, as they approached another, slower car, Mulder turned the headlights back on.

"You do this often?" Alex said quietly. He looked over at the other man in the car's shadows, but could not see his face clearly enough to read his expression.

"You live in Alexandria?"

"I--yes. . .why?"

"There's no point in going back to D.C. tonight and then both of us doubling back--unless you really need your car." A glance in the semi-darkness. "I could drop you at your place, pick you up in the morning."

"I signed out this car. What if something happens to it?"

"I'm not suggesting we loan it to circus clowns. . .unless there's some kind of personal observation you want to make here."

"Pass."

"It's not against any regulations--you're not responsible if I run it into a brick wall."

Alex smiled in the dark. "This is a control thing for you, isn't it?" They were approaching the Alexandria exit. "Don't you trust me with the car, Pop? Or is it that you don't you want me to see where you live?"

"You wanna go back to D.C.?"

"Not really. But I have breakfast every morning at the Cafe Aurora."

"So?"

"If you pick me up, we'll have to stop. If I break routine they lose their touch, start miscalculating the milk-to-coffee ratio of my latte."

"Somehow I didn't peg you as a latte man, Krycek."

"Deeply latte."

They exited the interstate. "Where do you live?" Mulder asked, pausing at the first intersection.

"Do you know where Jordan Street is?"

In answer, Mulder started driving again. "What part?"

"Seven-hundred block. . .it's an apartment. . ." Alex cursed mentally. His apartment relocation had seemed droll at first, one of the chairman's snide tweaks, but he was afraid he'd be paying for it now. "Actually, uh, it's at the Foxchase. . .nothing personal, Mulder."

There was dead silence from the driver's seat until they neared the complex, and then Mulder spoke only to gain directions. When they pulled up in front of Krycek's building, Mulder said a laconic good-night and drove off with a promise to pick him up at seven-thirty.

Alex watched him drive off, then went in to his empty apartment, yawning and muttering tiredly to himself. "You're cute, Mulder, but tomorrow I'm driving."

 

* * *

 

Friday, 6:58 a.m.

Day over Alexandria dawned bright and hot and promised a brow-beading mid-August simmer. Alex woke at the sun's touch, in a damp tangle of striped sheets. He yawned, the impulse rising and subsiding along the muscles of his throat without quite reaching his jaw. His matutinal stretch was prolonged and feline, an arching, sensual exercise that ended with him rolling onto his stomach and staring slit-eyed at the clock.

A free association of thoughts and memories slithered through the twisty coils of Alex's awakening mind--speculations on the weather, on the likelihood of his apartment being bugged despite the chairman's assurances it hadn't been (yet); fuzzy deliberations on what suit to wear; reflective, fragmented reviews of information he'd gathered on UFO folklore, blending with odd bits of information he'd been given on Mulder; all of which gradually shaded into a impressionistic reverie of Mulder himself. Alex had spent most of the previous day studying him objectively, trying to sort out the other man's buttons, with a mind to discovering which to push and which to avoid; he liked to plan his manipulations--put his ducks in a row. But today's early-morning arousal lent a surprisingly lascivious tone to his thoughts.

Too bad Mulder wasn't just some guy down the hall, Alex thought, rolling over onto his back again and throwing an arm above his head. He'd do him a New York minute. Very fuckable, even if a bit past the buy-date for his usual taste. Ten years ago he'd probably been exactly the kind of juicy, clueless puppy Alex loved to shove around. He was still hot, no doubt about it, but he was also edgy, paranoid, cranky, and arrogant. Alex liked a more malleable personality. Not warm and fuzzy, but not an emotional cuisinart either. Mulder was like a walking jack-knife, always open, always honed. Hmm. . .but wasn't there something sexy about that, when you stopped to think about it. . . ? Alex stopped thinking, and let his right hand idle down his body.

There was nothing more wickedly pleasurable, he'd found, than using his bureau colleagues--straight, earnest, size-regular joes for the most part--in his fuck fantasies. Mulder didn't fit the type, of course; this was a man with his own personal zip code in the twilight zone. But there was still a perverted thrill to be had. Alex's quickly-sketched fantasy sequence began with him putting a gun to Mulder's head while he drove--yesterday, say, at some point in their trip. . .or today. He'd make him pull over at a rest stop, handcuff him, take him to the men's room, torment him a while, polish his piece for him, then fuck him hard against the wall.

Eyes closed, face flushed and concentrated, Alex slid his hand into his boxers and stroked himself stiff, trying to tune in an imaginary picture of Mulder half stripped and surly, propped awkwardly against a wall with his hands cuffed behind him, resentfully aroused and growling obscenities while Alex rammed into him again and again.

"Oh--fuck--" he muttered breathlessly. His self-caresses quickened, lips parted and body tightened, and then he was bucking against his slick palm, shooting across his belly.

Sweet Jesus, he loved waking up in the morning.

Alex blinked his eyes open and stared dreamily at the ceiling. Palm tingling, cock still pulsing, he drew his hand up along the easing shaft, along his torso, then lifted it wetly to his mouth, licking himself like a cat. He stretched both arms above his head, grasping the bars of the headboard and luxuriously arching and twisting his body until his spine popped gently. His lips curved upward in a sated, unseen smile.

Loved it, Mulder. Thanks.

He had to hurry then, leaping out of bed and kicking himself free of his boxers, then bounding into the shower for a lather that clocked at under four minutes. He rolled rapidly through his a.m. routine, alert at every move, assessing every detail that reached his attention to determine if the ducks were lining up for him, if his life was proceeding according to plan. It was a nearly continuous mental process, kicked into gear years ago and by now almost second nature. It was only after his parents' deaths that Alex had discovered a resolve in himself to make something of his life, a resolve that had eluded him while they lived. Ambition when it did arrive had struck with a vengeance, and he'd set out to build a life that was as unlike his parents' as he could make it. He liked to look back and measure how far he'd come in the relatively short time since then, how different he was now.

It was a difference measured in the cost of his Omega watch he was strapping on his wrist, in his Bruno Magli shoes, his Ralph Lauren tie. It was found, a tactile manifestation, in the soft linen of his shirt, the crisp cotton of his Nautica suit, in the kiss of his tie as it slid through his fingers. Even his drab-colored socks had that silky, expensive feel he'd come to prize. Distinction was in the details, Alex had learned. His apartment too reflected the deliberate construction of a life bearing no connection to his past. He'd uprooted himself long ago--now he was wrenching the roots themselves free, himself free of their clinging tangle.

He glanced around his home as he was about to leave. Though chosen for him, he'd made his own. No supermarket art hung on his walls, not a single tacky plaid met the eye--no bowling trophies, installment encyclopedia sets, kitschy collectibles. He'd educated himself, supported himself, bettered himself. Here was further proof, if any needed it. Smiling, he took a look in the mirror--Krycek, FBI--then let himself out. The door banged smartly behind him and he took the stairs two at a time. It was good to be alive.

6:59 a.m.

Most mornings Mulder didn't need an alarm to wake up. The clock in his brain could be set to whatever time he chose, and went off reliably whether he was hung-over, still bombed, or simply exhausted. This morning was no different. He opened his eyes and was awake, his mind already busy scrolling through data, indexing recent memories and previewing the day ahead.

He noted it was Friday, half-heartedly tried to guess where the temperature would top out, ran his daily self-check for signs of overnight abduction, outlined his next moves on the Grissom case, confirmed that the envelope Scully had given him was still under the sofa cushion, mentally surveyed the state of his laundry, wondered if his blue summer suit qualified as road-kill yet, then succumbed to a drift of ruminations on the dream he'd had just before waking (in which he'd been hung from a tree by one foot) that somehow segued into thoughts of Krycek, New York, Riley's chances to lead the team to the play-offs this season, bagels, the Strand, certain personnel of the New York City field office, Krycek once more, Krycek's tailor, the odds of Krycek being an alien (low to moderate), the photographs Scully had given him, Scully, the autoerotic pleasures of lipstick, Ellens, photography as an evidentiary medium, Frohicke, the odds of Frohicke being an alien (moderate to high), Samantha, suicide, John Stuart Mill, Woody Allen, and coffee.

The thought of coffee brought Mulder into a more goal-oriented mode, and he sat up at last, swinging his legs over the edge of the couch. Rubbing a hand absently across his face and scalp to get the blood flowing, he squinted at the windows, then at the T.V., then at his toes. From the apartment below came the muted syncopation of a samba. He rested his elbows on his thighs, his head in his hands, and stared at the floorboards a moment, emptying the clutter from his brain pan, gearing up for the day. His mind registered that the floor was dusty, in need of cleaning, which in turn led him to wonder--not for the first time--if he could trust his cleaning service, and whether he should worry more about the maids tapping his phone lines and hacking his files, or the possibility of returning home some day to find one shot dead execution-style on his coffee table.

Did other people have these worries?

He stood, clicked off the T.V. that had been playing all night, swept a pile of sunflower shells off the coffee table, then collected the newspaper off the front mat, half-expecting to find in it another communication from his new, anonymous source. But there was nothing this morning. Nothing relating to his case, anyway. The Pope was planning a visit to Sarajevo. Russian workers, digging the foundation for a new bear cage at the Moscow Zoo, had discovered a mass grave of skeletons and skulls. The Shuttle Discovery launch for the second Space Radar Laboratory mission had been aborted, the female condom had arrived in the U.S., and The Lion King was predicted to gross over a billion dollars in ticket sales and merchandising revenues.

Greetings--welcome to Earth! Please don't feed the monkeys!

Mulder tossed the paper on the couch and wandered into his bedroom, pulling off clothes as he went and pitching them across the room into the hamper. His sweats dribbled over the edge, and his briefs snagged on the tube of his telescope and dangled above the hamper's open mouth, creating an image that was not without a certain lewd suggestiveness. Patrick Ewing he was not.

In the shower he let the steaming water beat down on the back of his skull for longer than necessary while he murmured snatches of John Berryman's poetry. I don't operate often. When I do, persons take note. Nurses look amazed. They pale. The patient is brought back to life, or so. . . .I am obliged to perform in complete darkness operations of great delicacy on my self. Mr Bones, you terrifies me. No wonder they don't pay you. Will you die? My friend, I succeeded. Later. Water streamed down around the curve of his skull into his face and eyes. After a while he lifted his face and let the hot, thickly focused jet drill punishingly into his mouth and foam back out until he had trouble breathing--which was a mistake, since he didn't have time this morning to jerk off. Half-aroused and irritated with his impulsiveness, he finished his shower cold.

He dressed, fed his fish, and flew out the door, running late to pick up Krycek, who was probably going to prove a morning person if he remained true to form. Mulder himself wasn't a morning person (given how little sleep he got, some would say he wasn't any kind of a person at all), but he could usually manage coherence on demand, if not manners. He knew he should have set the time for eight o'clock--he'd have gotten his morning run in, at least--but he'd been bent on demoralizing the other agent, trying to put a bit of drag on the rocket's tail. Krycek, though, hadn't even squeaked at the arrangement.

Damn his eyes, Mulder thought satirically. Setting off in the Bucar with a small screech of rubber and predatory concentration, he vowed to pluck out those bright eyes of Krycek's, and skin his bushy tail too, if he spoke a single unnecessary word before coffee.

7:54 a.m.

"Friday is pancake day."

Mulder gave Krycek an expressionless, heavy-lidded stare.

The freeze blew right over Krycek. "You should eat something," he said with a show of dispassionate solicitude. "You look tired. Didn't you sleep?"

"Bureau agents shouldn't have a death wish. It's a poor psychological profile for success."

Krycek's eyes gleamed and he smiled patronizingly. "A man your age--"

"You don't want to go there."

The smirk remained, but was redirected to the woman behind the counter in the guise of a smile. "The usual, Letty. And for my partner--" He turned on Mulder a broad, inquiring face. "Black, Mulder? Danish? How about one of those bagels--egg, ham, cheese--?"

"Coffee, black," Mulder said to the woman. "What kind of pancakes are they?"

"Special--blueberry today, sir," the woman said in a faintly accented voice, nodding happily and approvingly at him.

"Pancakes."

The food was packaged to go, but they found seats at a lobby table. Mulder tore into his food with single-minded attention. Alex, inhaling the first of two lattes he'd ordered, inclined back in his seat. His gaze danced around the lobby, lighting briefly on everything, lingering on nothing: Mulder, street traffic outside, the other patrons still inside the cafe or hanging about its perimeter--businessmen on automatic pilot, sugaring their coffees and grunting brutish salutations to one another. He unknotted his banana-walnut muffin, chunk by chunk, and eventually began eating the pieces. Mulder's gaze rose from his pancakes just high enough to contemplate this business.

"I thought you were all for a hearty breakfast."

"Where'd you get that idea?" Krycek rolled one of the muffin pellets into a tiny ball, dung-beetle fashion, looking absorbed in his work. "So, what's on the agenda for today?"

"Check in at the office, then head to New York. Shit. . .I didn't even think--we should pack for a few days. We'll have to run back by the apartments." Mulder sounded annoyed, either with himself for the lapse, or for the delay.

"Shouldn't take long." Alex studied the other man covertly, wondering if this was some kind of ploy akin to his earlier partner-ditching scam, but unable to imagine what it might be. If Mulder had wanted to see his apartment, no invention was necessary--he could have turned up early this morning. This level of paranoia may actually be counterproductive. I've got to stop thinking like a character out of a Le Carre novel, or I'll tip my hand. Besides, my apartment isn't a crime scene, for chrissake, and he's not Sherlock Holmes.

"Let's go," Mulder said, standing and clearing his debris.

Alex, rising at the same time, put on his most reasonable, innocent face. "Want me to drive?"

When they reached his apartment complex again, it was hard for Alex to sustain his vague suspicion of Mulder's motives. Mulder (who had, of course, driven) settled back in his seat, looking impatient but resigned.

"I'll wait here. Don't pack neatly."

"Why don't you come in--you never know when that coffee will strike."

After a moment's deliberation, Mulder got out of the car and followed Alex in wordlessly. Alex hadn't figured out yet if Mulder just sucked at small talk, or if he was carrying a buffalo-sized chip on his shoulder--both, perhaps. Or maybe he was shy?

Yeah, right.

As Krycek disappeared into his bedroom and packed, Mulder wandered around the living room. It was pretty much your typical twentysomething male professional's abode--passably clean, with an expensive entertainment system, generic furniture, and the kind of over-priced accents acquired during shopping sprees at IKEA, Crate & Barrel, and Pier I. But there were personal distinctions as well. Mulder noted a quilted wall hanging with a hope-chest, hand-me-down air that looked oddly out of place in the otherwise spare decor. He studied it a minute, then let his gaze travel over the contents of a standing bookshelf, where postgraduate leftovers--criminology textbooks, Hesse paperbacks, various Norton anthologies--shared shelf space with a small library of decent hardbacks, what looked to be modern firsts. Science fiction represented its ranks with several by Delaney, Clarke, and Gibson, and there was a showing from the usual suspects--a glossy Grisham here, a fat Clancy there--but two entire shelves were filled with the works of Graham Greene and John Le Carre, to dominant effect.

Lower shelves held paperbacks, mostly science fiction, mixed with some ufology "classics" and an eclectic smattering of poetry. Mulder squatted and scanned the slim spines. Merrill, Whitman, Cavafy, Doty, Ginsberg, Rimbaud, Auden, Crane--

Mulder stood up quickly, a sensual burn unzipping him from throat to balls before he could censor the reaction. Face hot, pulse jumping, he glanced quickly at the open door to Krycek's bedroom, then slunk away from the bookshelf, retreating to the far side of the room to examine a poster. Maybe he could forget he'd seen that. Abort the connection, bury the surprisingly strong response.

"I'm almost done," Krycek called.

Mulder made a vague sound of acknowledgment in return, and continued to edge around the living area, inspecting the kitchen (neat, low-maintenance, no copper) and dining room (surrealist wine-rack, voluminous ficus), then--on some impulse he couldn't quite identify--he moved further into the dining room, paused, and turned. A huge Navajo sandpainting rug hung on the dividing wall, covering nearly its entire surface.

Alex returned to find Mulder studying the wall with mesmerized intensity. "All set." He followed the other man's glance, flicked a look back, trying to discover what was going on behind Mulder's opaque eyes. "Like it?"

"Like. . .it's incredible. It's the Whirling Logs Narrative, isn't it--from the Nightway chant?"

Alex stared at him. "Jesus, Mulder. What are you--the resident Rhodes Scholar of the basement bureau? I don't know what it means. I just liked it."

"What are you doing with this if you don't understand the symbolism?" Mulder seemed almost angry; his flat voice ground out words as if across sandpaper. "This has a sacred significance for the Navajo--permanent representation of sandpaintings is still a controversial subject in the Nation. Where did you get this?"

"I bought it, Mulder. Legally, with a wad of cash that would choke a horse. Do you mind?"

"You just happened to have--what--five, six thousand dollars to blow?"

"It was eight--and yes."

Their eyes met and held, banked ire snapping between them, and then Mulder unexpectedly broke the look, brushing past Alex toward the front door.

Bemused, Alex grabbed his suitcase and followed. Hmmm. . .what could spook a spooky little boy like you, I wonder. . .was that a blush, Mulder?

Mulder didn't invite Alex in, and Alex didn't push it. It seemed no time at all--had five minutes even passed?--before Mulder was back, tossing a suit-bag and case in the trunk and sliding back behind the wheel. Alex had contemplated moving into the driver's seat while he was gone, just to tweak his nerves, but had thought better of it.

The drive into D.C. was uneventful, and they briefly went their separate ways inside the building, making plans to meet up again in Mulder's temporary digs in the white-collar section.

"Ditch me again, Mulder, and I'll hunt you down," Alex said before they parted, practicing a steely gaze on the older man. It wasn't the most refined steel, but he captured Mulder's attention at least.

"Don't worry, Krycek. I've resigned myself to babysitting. . .hey, maybe tonight we can make popcorn, play some Go Fish."

Mudak, thought Alex, watching Mulder leave. And if you think that great ass of yours redeems the asshole it's shipped with, you've got another thing coming, pal.

10:42 a.m.

"Victim's name was Henry Willig. Unemployed, lived on disability. Police got no indication of forced entry or struggle. No abrasions, no contusions or trace evidence in the body--and cause of death is being listed as. . ." Alex flipped through the file he was holding. "Burst aneurysm."

"So why did your friend from homicide call us?"

Alex, hearing the skepticism underlying Mulder's casual question, glanced sidelong at the other agent. Mulder, studying the scene photos, was oblivious to the look. He'd folded his arms in a classic defensive posture, as if disinclined to consider anything Krycek might say.

"Because the medical examiner called him," Alex said. He stood to gesture at a close-up of Willig's unmarked body, one of several photos he'd arranged on the display board. "The autopsy revealed forty-three small internal hemorrhages and skeletal fragments--which doesn't just happen spontaneously. Not without some sort of corresponding external trauma." Unfeigned fascination tinged Alex's voice; he was becoming intrigued with the case. He'd have to try and remember not to let it distract him too much from his other assignment.

"What does the M.E. have to say about it?"

Alex, still studying the photos, shook his head a little. "He said if he didn't know otherwise"--he turned to direct a pointed look at Mulder--"he'd swear they were gunshot wounds."

For a minute, Mulder's only response was thoughtful silence. Then he came up to the board and pointed to a close-up photo showing the back of the victim's neck.

"What's this scar right here?"

"According to the medical history the only surgery he ever had was an appendectomy."

"Well, unless they got to his appendix through his neck. . ." Mulder's voice trailed off dryly.

Alex looked suddenly down at file he held as a thought struck him. "Maybe it happened in Vietnam. Willig did a tour with the Marines in 1970. And I'm sure they didn't keep the best of records."

Mulder had moved to the desk they'd temporarily commandeered and was shuffling through papers. "Willig was a Marine?"

Alex gave him a faintly quizzical look. "Yeah." With a little frown, he returned to studying the file.

Mulder returned to stand next to him, flipping open and searching intently in another folder.

"So where do all Marines receive basic training on the east coast?"

Alex, caught up in what he was reading, drew his attention back to Mulder. "Parris Island?"

Mulder, flipping through his file, nodded, then found what he was searching for and looked up with the first real spark of enthusiasm in his eyes that Alex had yet seen.

"Where Grissom was stationed from 1968 to 1971."

"Which means that he and Willig were there at the same time. Twenty four years ago."

Mulder gave him a quirky smile, and after a moment said softly, almost happily: "Bingo."

Alex's adrenal glands experienced a small spike in production. It was a strange twist of fate that the first really interesting case he was allowed to work directly had dropped in his lap because of Mulder--and was, presumably, exactly the kind of case the brass didn't want this rogue agent poking into. He reigned in his excitement and reminded himself what his job was. The chairman's instructions were incised on his brain. Watch him. Find out where he's getting his information. Find out who's helping him. Pass on warning if he starts sniffing around people and places he shouldn't--those in our government. He's a mole, Alex. If he were a mole for, say, the Russians, his treason would be less ambiguous, more easily dealt with. . .but he's a mole all the same, and he's bent on undermining the government--the very foundations of this nation--whether he realizes it or not. . .

"What now?" Alex said aloud. "New York, New York?"

"Start spreading the news," Mulder agreed cheerfully. "We'll head up to the city, touch base with this Horton, hit both crime scenes, then drop into a Jackson Hole and wrap ourselves around a coupla' man-sized burgers. Not a vegetarian are you, Krycek? I saw you playing finger-hockey with those McNuggets last night."

"I wasn't really hungry--and that McBeef is gopher on a bun. God, I'd kill for a real burger."

"Egg cream at Junior's."

"Street vendor dogs."

"Bagels--Stage Deli--cream cheese, Nova lox--"

"Periyali gyros." Alex's eyelids lowered and his voice grew husky. "Dolmades, souvlaki, spanakopita, moussaka. . ."

"Oh my god," Mulder said, rolling his head and giving a mock groan.

Alex grinned. He liked a partner with a good appetite--in all things.

The phone on Mulder's ersatz desk rang and he leaned over to pick it up. "Mulder. Hey. . .oh good. When--? You sure you're not too busy? . . . Be still my heart. You want me to bring you back something from New York? I know this little place on 42nd street that's survived the renovation. . .come on--a Lady Liberty Lover, red white and blue, size Big-Big-Apple, battery-powered torch--? . . . Okay. . .I'm not sure, you know how these things go. I packed my jammies." Mulder glanced over at Alex, face unreadable. "Yeah. . .I will. . ." His voice adopted a heavy New York accent. "Hey, ain't I always?"

Alex watched as Mulder, still smiling, hung up the phone and began rolling down his shirt sleeves.

"Scully?"

"Yeah. She's been in touch with the New York M.E. Actually, they called her. They're going to send their findings on to her for comparison against Grissom's autopsy results. She might do some further work on the body, too--Willig's, that is--if anything catches her eye."

"They shipping it?"

"Holding it for now, unless she wants it. I'm glad she had a look at Grissom's, though. You might never have gotten that call this morning if she hadn't done a little networking with the New York M.E.'s office. She had them keep an eye out for sudden unexplained deaths, particularly involving people who lived alone, solitary--how many like that you think come in on a beautiful August day in New York City?"

"I hadn't even thought about it. A few dozen, at least--on a slow day." He made a little face. "A cool day, that is. Don't think they've had one of those yet."

"Lucky, isn't it, that they found Willig before he began to bloat. I'd like to find out how the body was discovered so quickly. Horton didn't mention, did he?"

"No, but I'll call and ask--"

Mulder waved him off from the desk with a gesture. "Save it for when we get there. Five minutes of face-to-face is worth twenty on the phone. Plus--it's nicer. A guy like Horton has fifty things on his plate at any given minute. Metro cops distract easy. It's better to catch them when you're within grabbing distance of their tie. . .but you know that." They'd exchanged capsulized work histories on the to Quantico yesterday; each man unaware of the full extent of the other's knowledge.

Alex shook his head, made a small wry face. "Funny, I don't think I'm used to being a "Fed" yet. A year ago I was Horton--or, you know, on that track."

Mulder, pulling on his jacket, studied him with mild curiosity. "You've looked at clouds from both sides now. Any preference?"

Krycek turned from pulling the crime photos off the board and began sliding them into their folder. He looked up at Mulder from under long lashes, eyes holding that hawkish gleam Mulder was beginning to recognize and find rather. . .stimulating.

"Ask me a hard one. I like the view from up here."

Mulder wasn't at all surprised.

New York City, Manhattan

Midtown South Precinct

Friday, 3:24 p.m.

"You said you wanted to drive."

Krycek turned off the ignition, laid his forehead on the steering wheel, then beat it several times against the molded plastic. "Don't remind me," he said through gritted teeth.

"At least we can walk to the Grissom scene," Mulder said placidly as he got out.

Krycek, after a minute, pulled himself from the car, locked the door and cast a surly, tilted look at Mulder. "Believe me--we are."

They tracked down Horton with only the occasional minor detour arising from vague directions and misleading hand waves. Homicide sprawled across most of the second floor, a maze of cubicles, offices, and storage areas. In the main squad room, Horton's office was pointed out to them by a slim young woman in civilian dress who tolerated their inquiry with stone-faced attention to duty then slid off like a minnow on whatever errand they'd interrupted. Cool eyes flashed their way from various areas of the large room, categorized them, and then as quickly moved on to something else: a victim, a perp, a file, a screen. There was a crackling current of business getting done, woven in with the kind of continual background noise that makes silence a recognizable blessing.

Mulder wound between desks and the drone-like trajectories of moving bodies, Krycek trailing, to reach the glass-walled office. He peered through and rapped lightly on the door.

Horton was a man with a forgettable face and eyes that forgot nothing. His plain brown suit was half-shucked and rumpled, his white-and-blue striped shirt emitted a noticeable reek of baked-in perspiration, and his tie seemed to have been chewed on by some small animal. Nonetheless, he projected a competent air. He openly assessed the two agents as they took turns shaking hands with him. Pale blue eyes swept over them like impersonal searchlights. Under that look, Alex straightened a little.

"Good to meet you, Krycek. What precinct you say you worked?"

"First."

"Bureau?"

"Homicide. . .and then anti-terrorism."

"No shit. You work the bombing then, huh?"

"We all did--but I wasn't that high up the food chain. And it wasn't our show."

Horton's lips thinned in a manner that bore a distant relation to a smile. His cool eyes measured Alex's suit, glanced off the federal badge flashing open at his hip. "Is now though," he observed laconically.

Alex gave a tiny shake of the head. "Not my section," he said, with a neutral but friendly expression.

"No kiddin'." Horton turned his gaze on Mulder, studied him silently a moment, then waved them to seats. "So. Sit. You need--what?"

"We just wanted to ask you a few questions about the case."

Horton snorted, leaned back in his chair and stared at Mulder. "Case? Did someone say they got a case here?"

"You think we don't? Why'd you call us, then?"

Horton rocked in his chair a minute, hands laced behind his skull. For another man this might have been a relaxed pose; from Horton it conveyed the impression he was trying to keep the back of his skull glued on. "M.E. called me. Bug up his ass. You think I got time to dick around on a zero like this? I'm only too glad to hand this case over to you."

Mulder frowned. "But the first time--something must have prompted you to contact Agent Krycek about Grissom."

At Horton's silent, sardonic head shake, Mulder turned sharply toward Krycek.

Alex met those gray eyes head-on, and spoke in a low, terse voice before the other man could say anything. "Hey, I never said it was Detective Horton that tipped me, Mulder."

Mulder's face tightened, but he held his tongue. Fuck. Krycek was right. He'd just assumed--and wound up looking like an ass. The most basic lessons were often the hardest to learn.

"My misunderstanding," Mulder said to Horton. "But whatever your own feelings on the matter, Detective, we do have reason to believe there might be a case here. So I'd like to ask you a few questions."

Horton didn't have too much useful information to provide; but, despite his protestations of disinterest, he eventually did admit to having a "gut feeling" about the circumstances of Grissom's death. He'd been able to find nothing at the apartment to warrant closing it off as a crime scene, but his instincts had led him to order a roll of pictures taken, "just in case, y'know". Persons dying from sudden, unexplained causes were sent for autopsy as a matter of course, but under normal conditions it might have been several days--or longer--before the body was examined. This was, after all, New York.

"Your people have the scene now. Maybe they'll be able to find something. But, I mean, my opinion--? There was nothin' to find. That place was clean as a whistle. Vacuum marks, from the maid workin' in the afternoon, in most all of the rooms. Deadbolts in place--they had to break down the door. Windows tight as a drum--no surprise there. You'd hafta been the human fly to shimmy up those heights. Sixth floor. No fire escapes, just fire-proof stairs inside."

"What about the ventilation system?"

"Human fly, right?"

Mulder smiled.

"Okay--some kind of toxin in the works, maybe carbon monoxide poisoning--I thought of that. Guy calls in a fire, shoots his tube, and there's no fire? Well, I checked with the building manager and their maintenance people. Nothin'. Kitchen was clean, water tested okay."

"No similar complaints in the past? Reports of hallucinations, dizziness?" asked Krycek.

"Nah. Not even a loose atom of lead-paint's been sniffed up over there--an' let me tell ya, if it could've been, it would've--they got their noses high enough in the air."

"Maybe they don't inhale," said Mulder blandly.

Horton's lips didn't move, but his eyes brightened a shade--or perhaps it was a trick of the light.

"It's an old building, isn't it? I don't suppose there's any kind of original dumbwaiter system--?"

"This ain't no Agatha Christie, Agent Mulder. No dumbwaiter, no blow-guns, no snakes in the plumbing. Guy was old--old guys die."

"From psychosomatic fire-related injuries?"

"Whatever. I'm a detective, not a doctor."

"What about the firemen, the paramedics, neighbors--did anyone mention seeing a person leaving the scene? Anyone hanging around who looked out of place?"

"Nada."

"Did you talk to any of the fire team? Neighbors?" Mulder persisted.

"I asked around," Horton said with phlegmatic patience, rolling a pencil back and forth on the edge of his desk. "Nobody saw nothin'. Building's got a doorman and a security guard in the lobby. Desk, cameras, the works. No strangers unaccounted for."

"What about Willig?"

"What about him? That's the 115th, Queens. I live in Queens, but that's not my beat. You need to talk to Van Dorn." He gave Mulder a phone number. "M.E. called me, I called Van Dorn, I called you--what am I, a fuckin' switchboard here?" Despite his words, his tone of voice remained steady, mild.

"I appreciate your help," Mulder said with matching calm.

"That's a new one. Wish I knew what makes you federales tick, let me tell ya'. All the shit goin' down right now, and you want to try and round yourself up a circle jerk on this." He shook his head slightly as if in incomprehension, but his pale, watchful eyes were more knowing.

For a thoughtful moment Mulder sat in silence, staring out the window behind Horton's head, then suddenly he stood, prompting Krycek to follow suit. "Thanks for your time, Detective. I'd like to get a copy of any documentation you did on the scene. Notes, diagrams--even if it's just a personal log."

Horton's keen eyes narrowed even further as he regarded Mulder. "Yeah, okay. I got a few notes. You can have them, for what it's worth. On the deal, you do find anything, you let me know."

"Deal," said Mulder equably.

The street was hot and muggy after the relative comfort of the station. Krycek oriented them, and they set off for Grissom's 34th Street building.

"Horton didn't have much," Krycek observed as they wove through pedestrians of all shape, color, and design.

"He did a good job under the circumstances. Better than I expected."

"You think?" Krycek said, sounding faintly surprised.

"Security building, apartment deadbolted from the inside, aged victim, no obvious signs of violence, no recent visitors. A questionable 911 call, but what's that mean--maybe he was a little delusional--you get old, the sponge starts to get a little soggy, it happens. He wakes up from a dream, but not completely, he's a bit vague, sees something on TV--who knows? Only this to go on, but Horton still has the building systems checked, runs a test on the water, talks to the neighbors. We were damn lucky to get that much effort from an NYPD cop in the dog days of August. You've been here--you don't agree?"

"Yeah, you're right. I think he did some decent work. . .I just didn't expect--" He bit his tongue lightly.

"Me to know it." Mulder gave him a sidelong look. "I'm not an ogre, Krycek. I'm not an idiot either. . .though I certainly felt like one in there."

"I never said--"

"I know," Mulder interrupted. "So tell me now--who's your source?"

"Who's yours?" Krycek countered. They'd paused in the flow of sidewalk traffic, causing an eddy around them in its stream. People shoved by them, a few with snide remarks. They stared at each other in mutual challenge.

At last, Mulder said, "My tip was delivered anonymously--but if you know the origin of yours it might be a useful place to start. If it's a source inside the police department, who might have seen something--"

"Sorry. Mine was anonymous, too. Just a voice on the phone, some guy, I didn't recognize him. He said he'd heard of me, knew I'd been in NYPD, said Grissom's death wasn't completely kosher."

"Those were the words he used--"not kosher"?"

"Yeah, but Mulder"--Krycek waved his hand around to indicate the teeming polyglot crowds--"this is New York. Everyone says that."

"But how many people could have been on the scene who might have had some connection to you?"

Alex felt a muscle begin to tighten in his cheek, another in his stomach. A rivulet of sweat slid down his spine--but it was 103 in the shade, and felt like twice that on the sunlit pavement. The only thing that can hang you is your own confession. . .admit nothing. . .

"How many?" Alex said. "Cops, fire department, rescue squad--"

"This wasn't your precinct."

"Mulder, look. . .if you want to go this route, that's fine by me. You give me a list of names, I'll look at it. But just--don't get your hopes up. You get an anonymous call, it's usually because somebody wants to stay anonymous. And this is a big city."

"Big city, small world." Mulder turned and began walking, his strides long, the wheels in his brain turning furiously. Anonymous call, my ass. You know who tipped you. He supposed he couldn't really fault Krycek for keeping close-mouthed about his source--assuming that it was a legitimate contact, and that he hadn't been tapped by the bureau brass for guard duty. Mulder had seen, brutally and first-hand, what could happen when a leak was discovered: the leak was plugged. If he couldn't trust Krycek, why should Krycek trust him?

Half-consciously, Mulder eased his pace until he was ambling again. Krycek, however, unlike Scully, hadn't needed to sprint to keep up. He'd joined himself at the hip effortlessly. Only radical surgery was going to cut Mulder loose from Boy Wonder here.

Abruptly Mulder halted and swiveled to the left. Alex, caught off guard, had to backpedal through three chic women loaded with shopping bags. Briefly he was caught up and spun by a minor whirlwind of gauzy scarves, long flying hair, and shin-bruising totes. Sun glared off oversized glasses, and lipsticked mouths twisted and cried peevish imprecations: "Va chier! Va te faire foutre! Encule de merde!"

"Connasses," Alex snarled back, not far enough under his breath to avoid a swipe and an additional curse from the woman nearest him. He pulled from the fray, only to bounce off a large pinstriped man and lurch awkwardly into Mulder.

"Watch the dog, Krycek."

"Hey, Mulder--could you, like, signal next time you're going to turn? Thanks."

"Another one for my partner," Mulder said to the hotdog vendor.

"Mustard, onions, kraut. I don't know how you communicate with others of your species, but here all it takes is a word--even a grunt."

Mulder grunted agreeably around a huge bite of his hotdog. Alex took his from the vendor and plucked an orange soda from crushed ice while Mulder handed over a few dollars.

"I do have my own money, you know--just got my allowance," Alex said, jangled nerves lending a sarcastic edge to his voice; then, before Mulder could take offense, he added quickly, more easily: "Thanks."

Mulder cocked his head, squinted, and said Columbo-fashion around the last bite of his hotdog: "Don't mention it, pal."

Foster-Jenkins Building, West 34th Street

4:35 p.m.

They'd taken the stairs, from some perverse whim of Mulder's that Alex couldn't fathom. Flight by flight, without ever quite pausing, he gravely studied the treads, the walls, the handrails, even the ceilings, until Alex felt like biting him.

"Mulder, fifty firemen, tenants, and cops must have been up and down these stairs since the incident. I hope you're not looking for a footprint."

Mulder, who was just turning a landing, looked back over his shoulder at Alex with a beatific smile. "Just, you know, getting an aura, man. . ." He waggled his brows as Alex pulled a face. After less than half a dozen more steps, he came to an unexpected halt mid-way up the next flight. Alex nearly bumped into his backside, but it was probably too much to hope that this was Mulder's way of staging a come-on.

"What is it?" Alex said, peering around the other agent's crouching form.

"Dunno. . .looks like. . .bits from a straw wrapper." He stood up, holding the tiny scrap between two fingers, tweezer-fashion. "It's been twisted into a cross." He pulled an evidence bag from his pocket, dropped the paper in, then continued to study it through the plastic.

Alex looked at the bag, then at him. "You don't really think that has something to do with the case? That could have been dropped by anybody. It isn't even anywhere near the crime scene." He'd tried to keep the exasperation out of his voice, wasn't sure he'd succeeded.

"A crime scene is usually an arbitrary designation, ninety percent determined by the convenience of placing the barrier tape," Mulder said absently. "Somebody twists a bit of paper--microscopy may pick up sweat and other body fluids, transfers from various substances. . ." He fell quiet, shot Alex a glance, perhaps realizing he'd been lecturing. He stuck the bag back in his pocket. "Up we go."

Alex stared after Mulder for a moment as he ascended, and then began slowly following him again. Sweat had started to trickle down his back once more, maybe from the exertion of the climb, maybe from the minor lightning bolt that had suddenly struck his gut. It hadn't really hit him until now just how competent Mulder was, how much his intelligence was a factor in determining him a threat. He wasn't some dumb ape with a badge poking around into government hidey-holes.

What have I got myself into?

The sixth floor was still and almost completely silent. It was an expensive silence, the kind that comes built into thick walls and rises from lush fitted carpeting.

Alex felt a stab of envy as he took in the tiny details that added up to exclusivity and wealth of a level he'd probably never achieve--unless he made the right friends in the right places.

"You wanna bet, any one of these apartments represents the lifetime earnings of the average American worker," he said to Mulder.

"Safe bet," Mulder said. They'd come up on Grissom's apartment, by whose door leaned a tall mustached man in a gray suit who was scowling and checking his watch as they neared.

"Agent Bryant? Fox Mulder--this is Alex Krycek. Thanks for meeting us here."

The three of exchanged a routine flash of badges as Bryant said in a hard voice, "Yeah. Right. No problem. I love driving uptown this time of day and standing around holding my dick just so's I can hand off a bullshit report to a coupla' HQ joyriders."

"Glad to hear it," Alex said softly, stepping a bit closer to the man and edging Mulder slightly aside. "Because it was much more convenient for us." His eyes glinted and he waited alertly for Bryant's response, pleased at the opportunity to pick a fight. He was more than ready to punch someone; better Bryant than Mulder.

Bryant's face flared with rage, and he squared off instinctively with the younger man. "Listen, you fuckin' Hoover, Jr. jack-off--"

"That's enough," Mulder interrupted quietly, pulling Krycek back and stepping between them. Bryant looked ready to continue, but Mulder pulled the report he was holding from his clenched fist, and placed his own steady hand up against the man's chest. Though Mulder hadn't quite touched Bryant, the other agent knocked his hand aside almost immediately.

"Take it easy," Mulder rasped out, beginning to get fed up. He could feel Krycek behind him, a bundle of wired nerves charged and ready to blow.

His face twisting in an unpleasant sneer, Bryant pulled something from his pocket and tossed it hard at Mulder's chest from a distance of less than a foot; the item bounced off and fell clinking at his feet. "You take it easy, ghostbuster. And fuck off too, while you're at it." Bryant shoved by him and stalked off.

Krycek looked ready to follow and fight, but Mulder grabbed his arm. "Don't. We don't need any further antagonism with the New York office." He scooped up the fallen item, a set of keys, and straightened. "Squeezing an evidence team out of them was like shitting through the eye of a needle," he said sourly. "I'd rather not have to lick their jackboots for anything else we might need, if I can avoid it." He glanced at the keys in his hand, which were warm and oddly sweaty. "Hope he wasn't being literal about that dick-holding thing," he murmured to himself.

"Asshole," Alex muttered, glaring down the hall after Bryant; as the elevator doors were closing the New York agent shot him the finger. Alex bit back another curse, dismissed the man, and ran a hand through his hair, which heat and exertion had loosened into a limply tossed salad. Mulder was unlocking the door.

"You two met before?" Alex asked as they went inside.

"Bryant? No. Just talked to him on the phone." Mulder stood just inside the door and sent a slow scan across the apartment.

"Ghostbuster," Alex said, a small smile teasing the edge of his lips.

Mulder looked at him dryly. "Feeling lucky yet?" he asked, somewhat cryptically.

"It's a privilege to work with you, Buster," Alex said mock-earnestly, tilting his head and giving Mulder his best simper. Mulder surprised him by laughing, briefly but with what appeared to be genuine amusement. He had the kind of laugh that made a man plot further provocation in the hopes of hearing it again.

"Here, Junior." He handed Alex the thick folder. "See if anything jumps out at you."

"Feral cats, minor demons, evil puppets. . ."

"I knew we were on the same wavelength."

Smiling, Mulder pulled a pair of cotton gloves from his pocket and wandered off around the room. Alex stared thoughtfully after him a moment, then shook his head and started reading through the report. He read bits of it aloud to Mulder while following him through the apartment, room to room. It would seem that Horton had been right, after all. Forensics had found little of interest so far--a few fibers and hairs of unknown origin, not matching anything found in the apartment, which had turned up in the maid's unemptied vacuum bag--but that was only to be expected, and there was nothing unusual about them to suggest a particular lead. No prints other than Grissom's and the maid's, and a few unidentified partials taken from odd areas of furniture and appliances ("Movers and repairmen," Mulder said gloomily). These, of course, would be run through the national databank. No blood stains, semen, or oils--no odd trace materials period, other than what one might expect to find in a recently cleaned apartment.

"This place is a surgeon's wet dream," Alex muttered in disgust.

"Great jacuzzi."

They'd entered the bathroom. Alex followed the direction of Mulder's gaze, and felt another tiny needle of envy slide under his skin. How the rich did live. "Holy hot-springs, Batman," he said, echoing Mulder's comment. Despite an attempt for lightness, he heard a trace of bitterness in his own voice.

Mulder shook his head. He poked around for a few minutes in a desultory fashion, then went to the medicine cupboard, which had been almost completely emptied. "Read me the list of medications taken for toxicological comparison."

"Um, hold on--" Alex flipped forward a few pages. "Christ! Okay, here goes. Advil, Valium, Xanax, Zolpidem, Halcion, Restoril, Prednisone, Bisacodyl, Vitamin B, D, A, E, Inderal, Codeine, Darvon, Lopressor-50, Librax, Imodium, Monopril--"

"Monopril? What about Catapress--or they might have put it down as clonidine."

"Mmm. . .I don't see it."

"What about ergoloid mesylates or ergotamine--Dr Charyn said Grissom didn't suffer from Alzheimer's but he might have taken something for headaches or another condition--check for Gerimal, Progeril, Hydergine, Ergomar, Ergostat--"

Letting the file fall shut, Alex said irritably: "Why don't you read it, Mulder?" He held the folder out to the other man.

Unperturbed, Mulder took the folder, flipped to the list, stared at it for two seconds, then closed the folder and handed it back. "Thanks."

Alex grit his teeth. "Did you just read that entire list?" he asked as Mulder knelt and studied the contents of a shelf unit. At Mulder's abstracted nod and hum, he repeated in exasperation: "The entire list? It was almost a full page."

"Some people can sing perfect pitch, tie knots in cherry stems. . ." He looked up at Alex with a small ironical smile. "It's just a gift."

"So why--" Alex cut himself short. "Never mind."

Eventually they worked their way to the kitchen, where Mulder began poking through cupboards, sliding open drawers, taking lids off jars and sniffing various things.

"Says here they took samples from a bunch of different foods, Mulder."

"Yeah," Mulder said absently. "Scully told them what to look for. Along with medicinal side effects, she wants to eliminate any possibility of mycotoxic ergotism as a source of Grissom's hallucination, if it was a hallucination. . ."

"Peanut butter," Alex read off. "Peanuts, rye bread, legumes, cereal. . ."

"I think I'm hungry," Mulder said, his low, muffled voice working its way to Alex from inside a lower cupboard.

"What are you looking for?"

"I was thinking maybe a nice, thick Porterhouse steak."

"Inside a Cheerios box?" Alex said skeptically.

"Mmmm. . .you know, I found a mummified human finger inside a box of Fruit Loops once. Two crime scene teams had overlooked it." Mulder slid his hand down into the box and rummaged around, staring off unfocused into the middle distance as he concentrated on his sense of touch.

Alex looked on, tension rising in his gut. "Do you feel anything?" he said, almost whispering.

Mulder's own voice had lowered with suppressed excitement. "I think. . ." He paused, made an odd face. ". . .a dead mouse." He pulled a stiff, disreputable-looking rodent out of the box and held it by its tail. The corpse dangled, teeth bared, claws scrabbling at nothingness. Mulder studied it with thoughtful attention. "Get a bag out of my pocket."

Pulling his mouth shut with a snap, Alex obeyed. Mulder bagged the mouse and handed Alex the bag. "You don't mind holding onto this, do you?" he asked gravely.

"What do--you want me to carry a dead rat around in my pocket?"

"I wouldn't ask you to do that. A rat would ruin the line of your suit. It's just a 'wee, sleekit cowrin, tim'rous beastie'. . .or was, before it bit the big cheese."

"Fuck," Alex groaned under his breath, putting the evidence baggie his pocket with open distaste.

"Cheer up," Mulder said, clapping him on the shoulder gently and smiling with lively mischief. "Imagine what Scully's going to say when she gets the Fed-Ex."

Roger Smith Winthrop Hotel, Lexington Avenue

7:27 p.m.

"How, um, did you find this place?"

"What, you don't like it?"

"It just seems a little. . .twee," Alex said, slowing circling in place and staring with a quirky frown around the lobby, before following Mulder onto the elevator. They'd both opted to carry their own bags, collecting a disapproving glower from the bellhop for their independent-minded effort.

"My mom stays here, whenever she's in the city."

"Oh, yeah? Well I can see where, um. . ." Alex cleared his throat; he could have kicked himself. "It's nice."

"Twee."

Alex shrugged, trying to look properly embarrassed, though Mulder had turned away toward the front of the elevator. "Sorry."

"Twee," Mulder repeated, in subdued tones.

Alex, standing behind him, couldn't see his face, only a pale, fuzzy reflection in the polished brass of the elevator door. "Listen, Mulder--"

Mulder turned and looked over his shoulder at Alex, sensual mouth twisted in amusement, not annoyance. "So where do you stay when you're in town, Alex--the YMCA?"

There was a strange pause in which Alex stared at Mulder speechlessly and Mulder stared back, instantly regretting his casual, unthinking words.

"Is that supposed to mean something?" Alex said at last, heat stroking his cheeks.

"No," Mulder said simply, turning back toward the doors, which opened at that moment as if by his signal.

Though he didn't quite buy it, Alex wasn't inclined to pursue the matter just then. Somehow, by intuition or unremarked clues, it seemed that Mulder had sussed out his preferences; but, even if Alex had been inclined to broach the subject (and he wasn't), he was tired and hungry and had no energy left to divert to confrontation. Mulder, with a laudable if exhausting desire to cover as much ground as possible before calling it a day, had been ready to head out directly from Grissom's apartment to the field office at Federal Plaza, but Alex had managed to talk him out of this plan, and into checking in at their hotel and sitting down to a real meal somewhere. Neither of them had eaten much that day besides the hotdogs they'd grabbed on the hoof, and a miscellany of day-glo road food on the trip up.

It was odd, to Alex, to be back in the heart of Manhattan, within a stone's throw of museums, theatres, and the cream of the city's ritzy nightlife. He'd always loved New York; living and working here had been nearly a dream come true. Even the harsher details of city living--the expense, the crime, the ubiquitous cockroaches, the ridiculous inconveniences of transportation and lack of supermarkets--had factored into its raw appeal, lending an edge of shadow to the experience that made its neon brightness all the more luminous. While living here he'd never really had spending money, at least not the kind of discretionary income that would have let him enjoy the best the city had to offer; now, with money to burn, he regretted he wouldn't have the time on this trip to really blow a wad. A fine suit, a few trinkets, a four-star meal and a tumble with a buff little rentboy--Alex sighed and promised himself: next time.

"We didn't have to share a room, you know," he said as Mulder shifted his armload of bags and fumbled with their room key. "I don't mind paying the extra above our per diem."

"There was only the one room available--a last-minute cancellation."

"What if you couldn't have gotten in?"

"Oh, we would have slept in the car. It's the Roger Smith or nothing."

Alex didn't respond, but smiled despite himself. If truth were known, Mulder's low-key sarcasm--so blandly delivered you usually had to strain to catch it--was beginning to grow on him.

A sort of casual rapport had sprung up between them, without either of them trying very hard. Alex, though conscious of needing to hit it off with Mulder, hadn't gone out of his way toward that end; he'd concluded early on that if the older agent was to be won over it would not be through an eager, effortful courtship. Alex had been studying Mulder keenly during every free moment. Mulder didn't respond to flattery, enthusiasm, admiration, or deference; even simple courtesy didn't cut much ice with him, though he could be polite enough himself--when he chose. He responded most strongly, as far as Alex could tell, to intelligence, curiosity, bent humor, respect provided it was genuine, and above all to honesty, even when brutal.

He was an individualist working for an organization that prized teamwork, an eccentric in sheep's clothing, and an unapologetic nonconformist, a man who would publicly humiliate himself--know it--and not give a damn, all for the sake of his beliefs. And they weren't your average slightly-to-the-left-of-fringe beliefs, either. Mulder could have celebrated the joys of flag burning, advocated legalized heroin, voted the Communist party ticket, and defended the first-amendment rights of pedophiles without receiving half the flack he did for suggesting that humanity might not be the only intelligent life in the cosmos. Alex wasn't sure if Mulder had always been the insolent and rather irritable fellow he was now, or if too many annual picnics with the bureau's self-styled wits had sharpened his jagged edge--but he suspected it was the latter. And who could blame him? Not Alex. He far preferred Mulder's mordant moodiness to the relentless bonhomie of the typical bureau droid.

"Oh. . .wow," he said, sliding around to one side of Mulder (now trying with frustrated, half-formed oaths to remove the key from the door lock) and into the room. "This is, um. . ."

"Don't say it."

"Small. And. . .kinda pink."

"It was all they had," Mulder growled, freeing the key at last and pushing past Alex to dump his luggage on the nearest bed. "You're lucky it's a double."

"Yeah, I'll bet I am."

Mulder gave him a dangerous look. "I get the shower first."

"No argument there," Alex said cheekily, watching with satisfaction as Mulder flushed. Actually--though he had no intention of saying so--he found the other man's musky scent rather arousing. There was nothing like peeling a man out of his suit after a long and sweltering day and licking him clean to set in gear a good, old-fashioned raunchfest. He wondered what Mulder would do if he went over and began skinning him free of his damp and crumpled clothes, tonguing the sheen and grit from his tired face, from the medallions of his temples and blade of his jaw, the hollow of his throat. . .sliding his fingers into that heavy, tousled sheaf of hair. . . .

Fuck, he was looking really good right now.

Unconsciously, Alex chewed lightly on one edge of his lip. Mulder had already turned to unpack and missed the gesture and the speculative look.

What the hell am I thinking? Alex wondered. He sighed and tossed his suitcase on his bed. He half-stripped and collapsed back on the ribbed spread, indulging himself and playing risk by openly watching the other man.

"Damn it!" Mulder said, staring into his open suitcase. He looked mad enough for a moment that Alex thought he might finally let rip with some truly vile curses, but then his shoulders sagged a little; moodily and wordlessly he studied the interior of his case.

"What is it?" Alex asked with lazy indifference, tying his arms in a bow above his head and stretching.

"Shampoo," Mulder said succinctly.

Alex began to laugh, then--at the dark look Mulder threw him--tried to pull himself into a contrite semblance of control. "Sorry. . .you can use mine."

"Great, but that's not exactly the point." He pulled out a dripping shirt and held it up for inspection.

"They must have dry-cleaning."

After a complex bit of consultation, Mulder sent all his clothes to the hotel cleaners and agreed to borrow jeans and a tee from Alex ("Funky jeans--you were expecting to hit the clubs maybe?"), then disappeared into the bathroom to shower.

Lying on his bed and staring at the ceiling, Alex said, "I like those briefs, Mulder."

"What?" Mulder's voice called from the other room, rising above the shower's beating spray.

Alex smiled faintly at the clean white plaster. Nothing, Mulder.

Later that night. . .

"I'd like to know how that mouse got in the cereal box," Mulder said.

"Chewed its way in."

Mulder shook his head. "No hole in the box, no hole in the interior bag, no tooth marks. . .and it was near the bottom, under the cereal."

Alex leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and ran both hands through his hair. "Mulder. . .okay. Grissom gets some cereal--it's late, a late-night snack. He leaves the box open--"

"Cockroaches."

"He leaves the box out, open," Alex continued doggedly, "on the counter top, meaning to put it away later. The mouse--"

"Scales up the side of the box--"

"--jumps in the box from above."

Mulder laid his head on his arms and began to laugh into the mass of papers littering the table top.

"He jumps from. . .from inside one of the upper cupboards, which is left open--Grissom left the door open, because he got out a bowl and didn't close it. And he's probably got some poison in his system, the mouse, from a trap or something, and he crawls in, has a snack, and croaks--maybe even suffocates--and then, in the morning, the maid comes in, closes up the box, gives it a good shake, and puts it away."

"That's pretty good," Mulder said mildly. "How do you like a scenario where the maid looks in the box, sees a tail poking out, gives the box a good shake, then closes it?"

"Mmm, the dark side of human nature."

They smiled goofily at each other, both a bit punch-drunk.

"You know, I should call Scully, tell her about the Fed-Ex."

"Mulder, it's"--Alex looked at his watch--"almost ten-thirty. On a Friday night."

Mulder was already punching up the cellular. "Yeah, but she doesn't have a life either. . .oh hey, it's me. . .did I wake you? . . .that's okay then. . .yeah, but it's a chick flick--it's not like I disrupted your adrenaline rush or anything. . .I wanted to let you know I'm sending you a souvenir of the city, you should get it sometime tomorrow morning. . .oh, it's much better than that. . .actually it's a dead mouse. I found it in a cereal box in Grissom's kitchen, sort of like a free prize, though given a choice I think I would have preferred a decoder ring. I packaged it up with the box and sent them together--you probably have a cereal sample there from the same source, but I didn't want to take any chances. Have them dust the box, I don't think they did. . .yeah, I know. They're a real happy bunch, too. Only met one of them so far, but the guy practically gave me the keys to the city--I still have the bruise." He smiled, listened for a bit. "Yeah, okay. Hey, listen, you still have those plates bolted in over your vent grates, don't you? . . .Just kidding."

Mulder closed the phone and looked at Krycek, who was leaning back in his chair once again, eyes closed, face relaxed. He couldn't be sleeping, but he looked near to it. Viewed thus, his face was peaceful, even angelic. He looked like a choir boy--but all the choir boys Mulder had ever known were about as far from angels as you could get. Hell's angels, maybe. He wondered if Alex ran true to form: did a demonic imp lurk under that invitingly innocent exterior? Certainly, he wasn't as naive as he'd first pretended to be.

Drowsily, lids slowly weighing upon his tired eyes, his thoughts following a loose, meandering path, Mulder sat in the hotel room's late evening silence, staring across the table at Krycek and eventually forgetting that he was doing so--until Krycek abruptly opened his eyes and stared back. Mulder's heart jerked and then thumped angrily against his ribs at being so suddenly woken. Tongue-tied, he stared at Krycek staring back dark-eyed and glittering at him. In a rush he was struck by every detail of the man across from him: the rough stubble showing on his cheeks, the silky weight of his hair, freshly shampooed and falling loosely into his face, the astonishingly long lashes, brushed like smudges of charcoal above his eyes--unreadable, compellingly dark eyes. And lips, parted slightly within the still, watchful face.

"I--" Mulder's voice caught in his throat, a scratchy, whispered rasp like a hiccup. He swallowed carefully, looking away from his partner. "I'm going to bed."

"Yeah," said Krycek softly, "Me too."

A bit dizzily, Mulder stood and negotiated his way around his suitcases and to his bed. Just don't look at him. Go to bed, sleep, and jerk off tomorrow morning--in the shower, before he wakes up. Then, for an instant, standing next to his bed, pulling off his borrowed jeans, back carefully turned on Krycek and the room, he felt the hairs on his nape rise. A silken thread pulled taut in his body, drawing a line up along his throbbing nerves from the aching sac of his balls. His cock stirred, alert and eager for touch. He could feel Krycek's presence behind him, inches away, knew that he was nearing, readying to reach out--and then, glancing back in a near panic over his shoulder, he realized with shock that Krycek had gotten up from the table and gone into the bathroom, noiselessly as a cat.

Disappointed, relieved, exhausted, Mulder slid between the crisp sheets of the bed and fell almost immediately asleep.

Saturday, 7:15 a.m.

Mulder had been awake for the last fifteen minutes, listening to the steady breathing emanating from the other bed, and to the muted wail of sirens and horns from beyond the room's thick glass window. He lay on his back, relaxed. He felt. . .really good. He knew why; he usually slept much better in hotel rooms than in his own apartment, in his own. . .well--on his couch, these days.

Days? Try years.

There was something so lovely and self-indulgent about a hotel stay, given the right hotel. Some of Mulder's best childhood memories--before the event--were of visits to the city with his mother and sister. They'd always stayed at the Plaza, then. Both he and Samantha, but particularly Samantha, had been endlessly fascinated by the details of hotel living--the little wrapped soaps, the enormous, decadent bath towels that were replenished fresh every morning, the magically self-making beds, the pillow mints and flowers, the room service, and the punctiliously attentive hotel servants--maids, doormen, elevator operators, bell-hops, desk clerks, waiters. For a space of a few years, after Samantha was old enough to be interesting and before Fox took on the self-important status of a pubescing male, they'd been in perfect rapport, running around the grand hotel as if they owned it, as if it were their mansion and they were its young master and mistress. . . .

Abruptly, Mulder sat up and threw off his covers. Face wooden, heart raging and screaming like a creature immured, he yanked the phone to him, dialed the desk and somewhat curtly demanded his dry-cleaning. From the other bed came muzzy sounds of semi-awakening which he ignored. He paced and fiddled until his clothes arrived, then stripped naked and redressed in his work-out sweats, indifferent to whether Krycek was awake and watching. Which, as it turned out, he was.

"Where are you going?" he asked quietly as Mulder was pulling on his sneakers (a bit soggy around the laces, but wearable).

"Running."

"Want some company?"

"No." Mulder grabbed his room key and banged out before Krycek could say anything more. Unable to wait for the elevator, he ran down the stairwell, recklessly courting a fall, then flew out the ground floor fire door, startling a passing maid. From the corner of his eye he saw the faces of the desk personnel turn and lift and track his flight across the lobby. Outside, he paused, impatiently forced himself through an abbreviated warm-up, then tore out along the pavement, dodging street people, early morning pedestrians and their defecating dogs, and other joggers--stupefied, grim, oblivious souls in whose faces he glimpsed the distorted mirrors of his own. He cut over a few streets to Fifth, heading toward Central Park, unsure if he wanted to risk its paths without his gun, though his mood was black enough he nearly--nearly--didn't care.

In the end, he kept himself to the park's perimeter, reaching somewhere in the mid-70s before turning back. It wasn't much of a run, not measured by distance alone; it was hard to build up steam in the city proper, navigating traffic and other human hazards. But it was hot and humid even at this early hour, and by the time Mulder returned to the hotel he was dripping with sweat, every muscle in his body loosened and pulsing, the focus of his mind narrowed to the exertion, save for a small window through which he'd strained to keep up an alert observation of his surroundings.

The Sam Sam Sam that would forever be an elemental tattoo in his blood had merged with his racing heartbeat and was subsiding now, at last; the cries echoing in his skull--Fox--help me, Fox!--had been muted temporarily by the wind's scouring force, and by his own laboring breath, sounding harshly in his ears. He leaned against the outside of his hotel, stretching his trembling arms and legs, feeling the shivery prickling across his face and flesh that signaled distress or arousal, the onset of tears or ecstasy. Self-opiated on a mixed cocktail of endorphins and enkephalins--his neural brew well spiked--Mulder shakily made his way into the hotel and back up to his room. He took the elevator this time.

In the room, he found his partner awake and about. Krycek was dressed in shirt and trousers, and sat at the table with his bare feet propped on a chair. On the table in front of him were two settings, the before and after shots of an elaborate room-service breakfast: one neatly composed tray with all its elements intact, one shattered puzzle with its half-chewed pieces strewn carelessly about. Rose petals and a denuded stem had been deposited on a white linen napkin that was still neatly folded and unused. Incense of coffee hung in the air, with scents of soap and spicy aftershave, diffusing slowly on the bathroom's steam.

Krycek did not immediately acknowledge Mulder's presence. He had dismantled his toast into a litter of twisted screws, which he seemed to be dragging one by one through the eggy carnage of his breakfast plate. He was watching Speed Racer. In Japanese. His face simultaneously expressed absorption and boredom. Long, well-kept toes flexed upon the striped chair cushion where his feet rested. The buttons of his shirt were almost entirely undone, allowing Mulder to notice for the first time a thin irregular knife scar that descended from his collarbone along his torso. He hadn't yet gelled his hair and it stood out from his head, resembling a cat's rubbed, half-damp fur.

Mulder, sleek and wired, pulse not entirely deaccelerated from his run, looked at the other man's absorbed, three-quarter profile and felt his most guarded impulses run riot inside him. Alex Krycek wasn't the most stunning physical specimen he'd ever seen, but the combined effect of proximity, professional rapport, and the suspicion of sexual compatibility was proving hard to handle. It was a blindsiding blow, this arrival of desire in his carefully disciplined life. It had been so long since Mulder had felt that peculiarly heady mix of gut-knotting ardor and intellectual companionship that can strike when two people work closely together. Scully--yes, but that was different; neither of them had ever been inclined to pursue it further than mild flirting. This was something else, something he'd feared and avoided, a sweeping need that threatened to topple him off of his austere, isolate perch and into the boiling seas of simple, stupid human feeling.

He wanted to be with someone--with an intimacy in which mutual knowledge only makes for an increase in burning, in which even the most innocuous word and look and touch exchanged streaks a desperate, aphrodisiac longing through two bodies. He wanted to work and fuck, cyclically, to feed all his appetites as they came, and--he would not deny the truth--to be with a man, another creature like him who understood the underlying mechanism, the masculine heart, who would match his every whim and mood and need, and strike against him, spark for spark. . .someone who would walk beside him, someone he could rest against and look up to. . . .

A helpless welling rose in Mulder's throat as he stood dumbly in the doorway; an instant of lucid recognition touched him, discharging like an electric shock, with enough strength to leave him hollowed out and bewildered. He was for an endless moment--a small, miserable moment--separated utterly from the rest of humanity, knowing himself to be uniquely damaged, essentially anonymous, and adrift past all redemption. But though caught up in a swell of that bone-deep loneliness which rises and falls like a tide in every life, he was already reaching the crest of the feeling. In another second it had passed and he was merely suffering a vague sense of depression, along with a bemused uncertainty about what to say to Krycek, who had pulled his mesmerized gaze from the television and was quirking one brow at him.

"Good run?"

"I. . .yeah. . .I'm hungry." Rather awkwardly he approached the table, beginning to feel the slight let-down that hit him after a work-out.

"I can't believe you run on an empty stomach. I'd be puking after two minutes."

Mulder gave a small, dry grimace. "Who said I didn't puke?"

"Guess you are hungry, then." Krycek pulled his feet off the other chair, allowing Mulder to flop down into it.

Mulder lifted the warming lid on his plate, inhaling a dizzying aroma of egg and bacon. I love you for this, he almost said aloud, but came to his senses before he uttered the words. "Do you understand any of that?" he asked instead, jerking his head back at the television behind him.

Krycek shrugged. "A little. Not my favorite language." Still toying with his toast, he flicked an assessing glance at Mulder. "You must have quite a facility for languages. Photographic memory and all."

"It's not a photographic ear," Mulder said, only half-jokingly. "I'm afraid my neurons chauvinistically dedicated themselves to English early on--and any bonus points were probably used up learning Greek and Latin." He made a small face, then looked up from his eggs with a smile. "Besides, I don't have perfect eidetic memory--the ability to memorize the player stats of the entire NBA only counts for so much when you can't remember your own birthday."

Krycek laughed. "Everyone forgets their birthday once in a while."

"No--I mean, I can't remember my birthday--I have to look it up on my driver's license. I tell myself not to forget, and then later I realize that I have--again. If someone asks me, offhand, I sometimes know it. But not always. . .why do you suppose that is?" he mused.

Shaking his head disbelievingly, Krycek said, "You're asking me?"

"I told Scully about it once and she wanted to run a full neurological work-up. Took me weeks to distract her from the idea."

"Well if you are asking me," Krycek said ironically. "I'd say your brain's just crowded."

"Yeah, I like the simple explanation, too."

Alex watched Mulder eat. He ate like a child--not childishly, but with childlike seriousness, staring most of the time with grave attention at the items on his plate and lapsing often into silent deliberate mastication, as if in obedience to some learned, internal command. Alex wondered if Mulder's father had told him to "shut up and eat" whenever he dared to speak at the dinner table, or if Mulder family dinners had been more casual affairs than his own family's.

He could smell Mulder from across the small table; he was still slick and flushed from his run, hair damp and dripping, his cut-off sweats imbrued with his natural perfume. His outfit was minimal, revealing lightly-downed arms, elegant wrist-bones, a belt of toned flesh between the frayed shirt hem and the waistband of his shorts, and leanly muscled legs. His pulse still beat strongly in his throat, and though his breathing had steadied, it was all too easy to translate the signs of his recent exertion into those of passion, to imagine him naked and roused, body tensing in pleasure at a partner's touch.

Mulder looked up and their eyes met; the fork that had been on its way to his mouth paused, then lowered. "Listen, I think we need--"

Abruptly, Alex got up and pushed away from the table. "I'm going to finish getting dressed," he said, overriding Mulder's words. "Go down and grab a paper while you shower. You wanted to go to Willig's apartment, right? We'll need to head off as soon as possible then if you still want to hit the field office today, too--" He was sitting on his bed as he spoke, pulling on socks and shoes.

"Alex."

Alex looked over, making a mocking, inquiring face at him. "Fox?"

"Don't--" Mulder began angrily, then caught himself, hesitated. His jaw twitched. "You don't have to--"

"Mulder, don't go there."

"I'm not with OPR, Krycek. I don't care who you sleep with--"

"Christ! Will you--" Alex had leapt up, one fist clenched, and taken a step toward Mulder even before realizing he was moving. He stopped, but gave Mulder a cold, black-eyed look, unaware of the depth of rage in his eyes. "Shut up, Mulder," he finished at last. "Just shut up. We are not having this fucking conversation."

"Why does it bother you so much?" Mulder asked quietly.

"Because it's none of your fucking business. You don't care who I sleep with? Great. Prove it. Fuck off." Alex looked around for a tie, blindly grabbed the first one he came across, then scooped his wallet from the bedside table. "I'm going down to the lobby. I'll be waiting there." He left the room, slamming the door behind him, then stood in the hallway a moment, head pressed to the wall.

"Fuck!" he yelled, slamming his hand against the wall next to his head. When he straightened a pair of paunchy men in business suits had strolled to a halt and were giving him the evil eye.

"Hey, how you doin'," Alex said with a somewhat manic smile, flashing his badge at them smartly. "On your way to brunch? Well, listen, do me a favor--while you're enjoying your morning double martinis and your lobster fucking thermidore try and remember who's out there putting their lives on their line to protect your fat butts, okay?"

The men, startled at first, began to look outraged, but Alex had already turned his back on them and headed off toward the stairs.

I can't believe I lost my cool like that, he thought angrily as he descended. I should have played it off, "feigned incomprehension", pulled a fucking Mr Stupid. Some great fucking spy you are, Alex. Let's see, how will it go--? Oh, sorry, Mr Chairman, sir, but no, I didn't manage to get the dirt on Wonderboy, and I really wish I could stick around and help you out but I'm being fucking pink-slipped for being a fucking faggot (how appropriate), which they know because instead of hitting my target I let my target put the hit on me.

Yeah, that sounded about right.

Queensborough Bridge

9:18 a.m.

There was a frigid silence in the car during the ride into Queens--this despite the fact that the air conditioning had inexplicably broken down, leaving both men stewing in their own juices.

Mulder had settled into full brooding mode, but today Alex had no interest in drawing him out. The fact that Mulder was wearing the exact same shirt and tie he'd worn yesterday (albeit freshly laundered) was irrationally bugging the shit out of him, but he refused to comment on it.

They dropped by the 115th before going to Willig's apartment and hunted out the investigating officer on the scene. Asked how the body had been found so quickly, he shrugged.

"Got a call, 10-10, shots fired--"

"Shots fired?" Mulder interrupted. He and Krycek exchanged a glance, their previous tensions temporarily put aside.

"Yeah." The patrolman flipped open his log. "Neighbor across the hall called in. Said she heard 'a lot a shots--twenty or fifty'. Her words. Said they went on for thirty seconds or so--which is a hell of a long time. I asked her--thirty seconds? Was she lookin' at her watch? She said that after a few seconds she kept track by the wall clock. What could I say? She had me there. But. . ." He paused significantly, gave them a knowing look. "No one else heard them." The officer touched a finger to his temple, tapped it lightly. "You ask me she heard herself somethin' on the tee-vee and it were just coincidence with this guy droppin' dead the same time."

"Were you aware," asked Mulder, "that in autopsy the victim's body displayed soft-tissue and skeletal damage suggestive of gunshot wounds?"

The officer stared at them woodenly, obviously treating this as if it were a trick question. "You sayin' I missed seein' the buckets of blood there woulda been if the guy bought it from someone shootin' him?"

"No, of course not." Mulder started to say more, then gave up. He rubbed the back of his neck, sighed. "You don't mind if we get a copy of your report, do you?"

"Fine by me."

"What the hell is going on here, Mulder?" Krycek asked when they were back in the car. He sounded perplexed, the question largely rhetorical.

"How do you like--ghost bullets?"

Krycek gave him an uncertain look. "You aren't serious. . .are you?"

Mulder smiled sourly. "Ask me again, later."

Queens--Jackson Heights

10:39 a.m.

"You boys want some coffee?"

"No, tha--"

"Thanks, Mrs Dipace, that would be great," said Krycek, smiling at the thin gray-haired woman. Mrs Dipace nodded and limped off to the kitchen, as Mulder gave his partner a look.

"It's 97 degrees out, and rising," Mulder said sotto voce. "In here, it's a hundred and ninety seven."

"Just doing my job," Krycek said, eyes flashing. "Thought you'd want to scout the room."

Mulder shook his head. "Scout the room," he muttered sardonically. But he did, nonetheless, running a deceptively superficial eye across its clutter of medicine bottles, magazines, and photos, trying to discern the credibility of their witness. The television wasn't turned up particularly loud, suggesting she could hear well enough; a point in her favor. No "true story" or detective magazines. Nothing particularly interesting in the prescription bottles. He stopped next to a row of photos--graduation shots of a gloomy young man and a determined-looking woman, probably a sister. A vintage portrait of a man in uniform. Vietnam era, from what Mulder could tell. It amazed him afresh how quickly the world was aging--half-consciously he'd pegged Mrs Dipace in her mid-sixties, would have assumed her husband a Korean War vet, if anything. But those of the Vietnam era, men even younger than his father, were passing their mid-life points now. And baby-boomers were building stock portfolios and putting their kids through college. What would his sister be doing now, if she were. . .

Mulder forced himself to turn from the photos, away from the bright gauze-curtained windows toward the dimmer interior. Fans whirred and turned--three or four in different areas--sending little eddying breezes around the room, around him, stroking and lifting the curtains, ruffling his hair, laying a light touch upon his tie as if to adjust it. Krycek was standing across the room, in a kind of parade rest stance, watching him with sharp, expressionless eyes.

Mrs Dipace returned, carrying two coffees (served in Garfield mugs) on a dented tray, with milk and sweet-and-low.

"No sugar," she said briefly, not apologizing. "Diabetic."

While the coffee ritual was proceeding, Mulder studied the woman, mentally framing his questions as he drew here out in conversation. He complimented her apartment, asked about her family, determined that she lived alone, and discovered a number of details about her circumstances--that she lived on a military widow's pension, had few visitors, played bridge on Saturday nights, couldn't stand cats, and thought Bill Clinton was doing a pretty good job, all things considered.

"Mrs Dipace, I know you've been interviewed by the local police, but I'd like to go over the events of Thursday night--Friday morning--again with you, if you don't mind."

"And if I did mind?" Mrs Dipace said cannily, winking at him.

Mulder blinked, smiled. "Do you?"

"No, no. Why should I mind? I saw that film JFK. I thought it was a disgrace. That Hoover was a good man. If he were alive today, he'd have had something to say about that, let me tell you."

Mulder flicked a tiny glance at Krycek, who had raised his Garfield mug to his lips, hiding his own smile.

"I think you're right, Mrs Dipace." After a settling pause, Mulder began: "That night--" He didn't have to finish.

"So let me tell you." Mrs Dipace eased back into her armchair, unconsciously pulled the T.V. remote onto her lap, and smoothed at her skirt. "It was twelve-thirty or so, sometime then--a little after. I was watching the David Letterman show. He's no Johnny Carson, but what can you do? People move on. It was his time. So. . .I guess maybe I fell asleep. Which the officer said maybe I was dreaming, but let me tell you I'm not senile." She sounded indignant and disgusted, as if she recalled being accused of that failing. "Do you think I'm senile?"

"Not at all," said Mulder seriously.

"More coffee?" Mrs Dipace turned to Krycek suddenly, startling him from his note taking.

"Oh, no ma'am. Thanks."

"Tom Cruise--no, oh, who was that--that Gump fellow. Tom Hanks. He was on. I didn't see that movie. I don't go out too often. I wait for video."

"As near as you can remember, what was the exact time when you heard--what you heard, Mrs Dipace?"

"Mmm, twelve-forty, I think."

"And," Mulder said gently, "you heard. . . ?"

"Oh, I'm not sure, really." Mrs Dipace fiddled with her remote, frowning; she plucked lightly at one side of her wash-and-set, then stopped herself and patted the fading curl back into place. "I thought maybe an AK47, at first--but only for a second or two." She laughed as if embarrassed. "I think I was asleep, and it woke me up. But not M16's. . .you know, I really think they were M1's--five, maybe six. But now, they weren't all firing at maximum rate, I would have to say." She patted the remote against her thigh, picked up her coffee cup and considered its contents, then put it back down without drinking it.

The two agents stared wordlessly at Mrs Dipace, then at each other. Krycek pulled a double-browed look of flat amazement and gave a nearly imperceptible shrug.

"Mrs Dipace, you have a remarkable familiarity with military weaponry."

"Well, my husband. He always got so annoyed with them when they got the guns wrong. Would it have been so much trouble, he'd ask, to get the guns right?"

"In the movies," Mulder said.

"Yes, of course."

Mulder leaned forward casually, resting his arms on his knees, hands loosely clasped in front of him. "Mrs Dipace, why do you suppose no one else heard sounds of gunfire?"

"People don't want to get involved," she said, nodding knowingly. "Just like that Genovese girl."

"Genovese?" Krycek said blankly, looking up from his pad.

Mulder's lips quirked. "Before your time." He went on before Mrs Dipace could relate the story. "When you heard the shots, did you get any feeling for where they were coming from? Maybe the street--?"

"No, much closer--across the hall." She added peevishly, "You know that."

"Well, actually, Mrs Dipace, if there had been gunfire--actual gunfire--across the hall, there should have some sign in the room itself. Bullet holes, shell casings, muzzle debris--not to mention a great deal of blood, if Mr Willig had been in the path of the bullets."

"The officer said it was the T.V. I was watching Letterman, I said. His T.V., he said. What was he watching, I asked him. But he wouldn't tell me."

Mulder nodded slowly. "Do you remember anything else about that night--say, before you heard the shots? Any other sounds, noises. . . ?"

"Well. . .no, not that I heard."

Carefully, Mulder proceeded. "Think back. . .what were you doing right before Letterman started?"

"Getting a--a glass of water."

Probably a glass of gin, but never mind, thought Mulder. "You were in the kitchen?"

"Yes. . ."

Mulder drew her through a reconstruction of the time surrounding Willig's death, trying not to lead her anywhere in particular, hoping that something would suddenly come back to her. But she could recall nothing before the gunshots, and had seen or heard nothing afterward, while she was calling 911.

"I'm sorry I'm not more help," she said at last.

"You've been fine," Mulder said. He pulled out a card to give her and wrote the hotel number on the back. "If you do remember anything else, just give us a call."

Mrs Dipace took the card, turning it over a few times and examining it as if expecting some additional message to appear on its surface. "Fox Mulder," she read aloud, then peered up at Mulder, apparently for comparison.

"That's me," Mulder said, smiling gently.

"What kind of a name is that--Fox? You Indian? You don't look Indian."

"I'm not Indian," Mulder agreed, straight-faced. He hesitated, caught Krycek's openly interested expression, looked back to Mrs Dipace's expectant one. Reluctantly, he said, "I was named after George Fox, the founder of Quakerism. My mother helped edit a biography of him, written by one of her professors. His life story made a big impression on her."

"Why didn't she name you George?" Mrs Dipace said skeptically.

"I've asked myself that often."

After leaving the interview, the two agents crossed the hall and let themselves into Willig's apartment. In comparison to Mrs Dipace's homely nest, the dead man's room had an impersonal, transient air. The apartment, an efficiency, had obviously come furnished, and its mongrel collection of scratched, shabby furniture looked to have passed through many indifferent hands.

There really wasn't much to see. Both men stood in the center of the room and slowly turned, taking in the dismal atmosphere, saying nothing. Mulder consulted the crime scene team's notes, but these too offered little to go on. As he was half-heartedly reading and comparing the notes to the scene, Krycek wandered around the room, eyeing Willig's few effects with distaste. Together, they made up the pathetic detritus of a life circumscribed by lack of money, lack of imagination. . .and lack of hope, perhaps. On the sink: shaving kit, nail clippers, comb. In the closet a few threadbare shirts and baggy trousers, supplemented, in the top dresser drawer, by an equally limited supply of undershirts, underwear, and handkerchiefs. Porno under the bedside table, whiskey bottle by the couch.

"No medals," said Krycek.

Mulder glanced up from the windowsill he'd been examining. Krycek had lifted up the edge of a small pine box with his pen and was looking inside.

"He's got a jack-knife, mother-of-pearl. Pocket-watch--nice one, railroad style. Old lighter. Nixon supporter's button. Some other junk. He was in Vietnam, right? But--no medals." He met Mulder's gaze. "Kinda odd, don't you think?"

"You're right, it is." Good work, Mulder almost said, but didn't.

He stood and turned from the window, looking around the seedy room again, dissatisfied and frustrated. His mind worked trying to puzzle out the connection between Grissom's death and Willig's. The death of a wealthy, respected doctor in his Manhattan high-rise--the death of a nearly indigent veteran in this lonely hole--what was the connection? Both deaths were solitary affairs; both bodies bore internal injuries whose evidence was seemingly contradicted by a lack of any external damage. . .and both had been present at Parris Island at the same time, over two decades ago.

The connection was there, Mulder thought. They just had to find it.

"I hate to say it," he said aloud, "but I don't think there's anything of interest here. Grissom's apartment--this one--I'm beginning to think they may be clean." He looked down at a darkish wad of gum near his shoe. "So to speak. If we are looking at homicide, it may be not be in an immediately recognizable form. Product tampering, maybe--or maybe something else altogether." He frowned. "Unless forensics works up something from the trace, I think we should concentrate on establishing a further connection between the victims. Try and find out who might have had recent contact with both men."

Krycek, hands tucked in pockets, idled over. "Yeah, well--this is a certainly a dead-end, I agree." He seemed restless, impatient.

"Not ready to pack it in, are you?" Mulder asked mildly, brows lifting at Krycek's tone.

"Well, no. . ." He hesitated, shifted his arms in repressed frustration. "But I'm beginning to wonder what we've got here--I mean, with this. . .case." The last word was emphasized dubiously.

"Whatever's going on, I think we can be sure we have something. There is a connection between Grissom and Willig, we know that--"

"We suspect that," Krycek corrected. "We don't know yet for sure."

"Well, let's make it sure," Mulder said, suddenly feeling impatient himself.

"So? What? Federal building?"

"Yeah," Mulder sighed, then caught Krycek's eye, gave an inviting smile and eyebrow bump. "You wanna drive?"

"Asshole," Alex said, but his eyes gleamed with appreciative amusement. Every time Mulder manipulated, every time he took advantage, Alex felt a tug of kinship. He could play that game. He liked that game. He just had to make sure that when it came time to total up the score, it was his side that won.

End Part 1

 

* * *

 

In a Dark Time: Sleepless 2  
by A. Leigh-Anne Childe

Category: Slash [Mulder/Krycek]. NC-17  
Disclaimer: I hope Chris Carter doesn't mind sharing his toys. I promise not to break them. . .well, maybe their hearts.  
See part 1 for author's notes. Please send feedback to: <> No flames, please!

* * *

In a Dark Time: Sleepless  
(part 2 of 4)  
by A. Leigh-Anne Childe

FBI Library, Federal Building  
2:10 p.m.

"Here we go. Willig was assigned to a special force in recon squad J7. Thirteen original members--he's one of two survivors."

Krycek leaned in to study the computer screen. "Until yesterday," he said quietly, with a trace of dark irony. He gave a small, wry grimace.

Mulder leaned back, gave the keyboard a tap.

"Which leaves us with one person who can tell us what happened at Parris Island. . .one Augustus Cole. Let's hope he has a record."

"Vietnam vet? More likely than not," said Krycek laconically.

Mulder looked over at him. "The cynic outs himself," he said, deliberately allowing an ambiguous weight to rest with his words.

They were sitting in intimate proximity at the library terminal, both of them in rolled-up shirtsleeves. The building was air-conditioned, but dusty sunlight sheeted heavily through tall, nearby windows, and both men had begun to roast slowly in the poorly-ventilated room.

Alex met and held Mulder's gaze. Eyes like green smoke, cat-calm and depthless, regarded him equably. Already close, he leaned in even further into Mulder's personal space, resting his arm on the back of his chair and bringing their faces near enough to share an ice-cream. "Are you going to keep fucking with me?" he said softly, lips inches from the other man's. Mulder had gone still; only his eyes showed life, watchful and bright.

"Oh, I don't know," Mulder said carelessly, his voice equally soft.

"You shouldn't play these games, Mulder," Alex said quietly. In his peripheral vision he could see other agents working intently at the library tables, or pulling books from the stacks. He tilted his head, looking at Mulder speculatively from under his thick lashes. Alex knew the very moment when the other man's nerves kicked in; could feel the uneasy tension rising and radiating from his body. He smiled, and without warning slid his hand up along Mulder's nape, splaying fingers across the short hairs and up into the softer, thicker hair above, molding his palm to the finely sculpted skull. Expecting a snap, a cool withdrawal, Alex's pulse jerked in shock when Mulder arched his neck back and let his eyes drop shut. Lips parted, issued a whispered, ecstatic: "Fuck--yes--" Surprised, almost laughing.

Alex pulled his hand away immediately as if burned.

And Mulder returned his own heavy-lidded regard, his lips twisting gently. "I thought I was being obvious. . .guess not."

A quick glance around the room assured Alex that no one had observed the brief exchange. "You are crazy," he hissed disbelievingly, angrily.

"Hey, I'm the one being fondled, here."

Color tinged Alex's cheeks. "I was just. . .trying to yank your chain." His tone was defensive, his words more than half a lie.

"Felt pretty good. Want to yank it some more?"

Alex shook his head, stared out across the library, then finally turned and met Mulder's eyes again. "I can't--do this." They didn't tell me this, he thought desperately. "I--I don't think personal involvement is--when two people are working together--it's not a good idea." He was almost stammering, and felt like a fool. He wasn't worried so much now about Mulder reporting him to bureau officials; more alarming was the risk of the chairman finding out about this. What the hell would the man do to him if he discovered--well, anything? Alex didn't know what he feared more: that he might be pulled off the investigation and faced with some sort of punitive action, or that he might actually be encouraged to seduce Mulder. . .or be seduced by him, as the case may be.

Or--an even more terrible thought struck Alex--what if the chairman decided that a sexual scandal would be a convenient way to bring Mulder down, and sacrificed him--Alex--to that end? Alex didn't know enough about the Committee's methods to rule that possibility out. He knew fuck-all, except what they told him, which was, when you came down to it, fuck-all.

He could feel the other man's gaze was on him.

"You want me to drop it?" asked Mulder quietly. He was open-faced, without artifice, and so ridiculously, humanly beautiful that--like an unexpected slap in the face--it nearly took Alex's breath away, made vision almost a caress. His face might have been modeled to capture the very essence of humanity's strange loveliness: the monkey raised to an angel's state, a clown gilded and god-touched. His eyes were like those of some trapped animal, sad and mute, but the face in which they rested was hard. Pure. It was like looking at a man who had swallowed himself--the wolf after devouring grandma. In Mulder, you could tell, a gentler nature had been subsumed into a stronger, more ruthless incarnation. Even as Alex looked on the lapidary face seemed to harden briefly and then soften again--a trick of perception, a subliminal shift of muscle, he couldn't say. Yet it seemed clear now that somewhere under that crisp, aloof exterior, was warm, eager need, a hunger for contact.

Alex didn't know why that should unnerve him so.

"I--I don't--you don't even know me," he said at last, echoing earlier words. His voice was faintly accusing. "Two days ago you didn't even trust me--"

"I still don't. I. . .can't." Ruthless honesty was borne on the low, roughened voice.

Alex made a little sound of derision. "Right--so, what--? You just want to jump my bones?" He was half angry, half amused. . .and more flattered than he would have expected.

"They're pretty nice bones," Mulder said. But his own amusement had faded out somewhat by the end of the remark. He leaned forward over the keyboard, resting his forehead lightly in his hands, shielding his face from Alex. Long fingers pressed to his temples. When he spoke again, his voice sounded more tired. "You're right, this is--we really shouldn't--" He paused, then straightened in his chair. "Do whatever we were thinking about not doing," he finished ironically. "So. . ."

Another pause fell, in which Mulder stared blankly at the monitor screen, collecting himself, and Alex, at a loss for words, swallowed and looked out across the library, focusing on nothing.

"So," Mulder said, standing and gathering his jacket. "We run a search, see what we can turn up on Cole, and. . .grab some lunch."

Taking Mulder's cue, Alex adopted a casual, businesslike tone. "Great. Sounds like a plan. Chinese?"

"Sounds like a plan," Mulder repeated blandly, his face expressionless once more.


End file.
